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LONGMANS, GREEN, &o CO., NEW YORK. 



THE 

FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 



BY 

WILLIAM ALFRED MORRIS/ Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF WASHINGTON 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE &> 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 

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Copyright, 1910, 
By the President and Fellows of Harvard College. 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 




'CLA2714 : ': 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

PROFESSOR CHARLES GROSS 

IS DEDICATED THIS WORK 

UNDERTAKEN THROUGH HIS INSPIRATION 
AND COMPLETED UNDER HIS GUIDANCE 



PREFACE 

No writer has hitherto made a study of frankpledge except in 
a very few of its aspects. From 1832, the date of Palgrave's 
Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, down to 
the publication of Maitland's Select Pleas in Manorial and 
other Seignorial Courts in 1889, interest was almost exclusively 
centred in questions relating to the time and place of the origin 
of the system and to its supposed importance in the communal 
organization of Saxon England. Maitland's investigation as to 
its place in the tourn and leet system, published in the above- 
named volume, opened up a new field by emphasizing the real 
constitutional significance of the institution; and in the last 
twenty years there has been published and made easily acces- 
sible much material illustrating the procedure of the various 
medieval English courts that had to do with frankpledge, and 
thus affording a view of the system in operation. Only one per- 
son, however, has attempted to make such a study of the work- 
ings of the system as its importance demands, and even his 
investigation is limited in range to a local field, the city of 
Norwich; but the excellence and interest of this work (Hud- 
son's Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, published some seventeen 
years ago) encourage the undertaking of a similar study of the 
institution wherever found in England. One might well wish 
that Liebermann, the latest and most accurate scholar to write 
upon frankpledge, had been able to turn his great learning in 



viii PREFACE 

this direction ; but he has, like earlier writers, concerned himself 
chiefly with questions touching the beginnings, rather than the 
workings, of the system. It has been the aim of the present 
writer, without neglecting the information already so well 
brought out concerning both the origin of frankpledge and its 
constitutional importance as part of the local government sys- 
tem, to make a study of its maintenance, functions, and decline, 
and also to discover just how far it is possible at this time to tell 
where it existed in England and where it did not exist. 

Although a list of books used in preparing the following 
chapters will be found on a later page, something may be said 
here as to the importance of some of the more prominent ones, 
and as to the writer's indebtedness to them. The sources 
for the origin of frankpledge are the Anglo-Saxon laws, and 
the Anglo-Norman compilations known as the Leges Henrici 
Primi, 1 the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, and the various ver- 
sions of the so : cajled laws of William the Conqueror. The 
splendidly e'dited Gesetze, issued by Liebermann within the past 
twelve years, contains laws not before published, and clearly 
supersedes the earlier work of Thorpe and Schmid in this field. 
Of the older works on frankpledge Palgrave's is the best. His 
conclusions, although sometimes conjectural, have remained to 
the present time the basis of information in regard to the dis- 
tribution of the system; and in some ways they almost antici- 
pate Liebermann's investigations. Kemble, who wrote his 
Saxons in England (1849) under the spell of the mark theory, 
uncritically assumed the existence of frankpledge in Saxon Eng- 
land, and attempted to make the frankpledge tithing a unit of 
local organization. A little later, William Maurer, in his Inquiry 
into Anglo-Saxon Mark Courts, made further arguments along 

1 Throughout the present work the abbreviated title Leges Henrici is used 
for Leges Henrici Primi. 



PREFACE ix 

the same line, although Marquardsen had in 1852 shown in a 
convincing manner that frankpledge could not have existed 
beside the borh system found in the Anglo-Saxon laws. Mar- 
quardsen's work is still the most detailed study of the Anglo- 
Saxon surety system in print ; but Waitz reaches very much the 
same conclusions in summarizing the literature on the subject 
in his Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte. It was in the latter work 
that the similarity between frankpledge and English institutions 
known to have been introduced by the Norman kings was first 
clearly set forth. Another distinct contribution of Waitz lay in 
proving that frankpledge was not a primitive Germanic institu- 
tion. Waitz is, however, too much inclined to hold that the 
frankpledge tithing was a creation of William the Conqueror 
rather than a development of Saxon usage. Schmid, in editing 
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, first adduced the argument for a 
Saxon origin of frankpledge from the ignorance of writers of the 
twelfth century; and Liebermann has more recently sought to 
strengthen the same line of thought. The contribution of Stubbs 
to the literature of frankpledge lay in pointing out that, although 
the similarity of the obligation of the tithing to that of the hun- 
dred in cases of murder points very clearly to William the Con- 
queror as the organizer of the system, frankpledge is neverthe- 
less to be regarded as a development of Anglo-Saxon suretyship. 
Maitland, who believed that the origin of the institution is in 
large measure yet to be explained, never undertook to grapple 
with the problem, but merely dropped here and there in his 
writings hints that seemed of value to him. He adopted the 
theory of a Saxon origin. Liebermann, in attempting to show 
in his Ueber die Leges Edwardi Confessoris that frankpledge 
came into existence at some time between 1030 and 1066, de- 
pends much upon the ideas of persons who wrote after 11 15; 
but his scholarly conclusions as to conditions between 1030 and 



x PREFACE 

1086 are strongly in favor of dating the beginning of the sys- 
tem from the reign of the Conqueror. 

Concerning the distribution of frankpledge, the Rotuli Hun- 
dredorum and the Placita de Quo Warranto contain valuable 
material which has not before been utilized. The recently pub- 
lished Pipe Rolls from the fifth year of Henry II onward, taken 
with the Pipe Roll for the first year of Richard I long ago 
edited by Hunter, and the Pipe Rolls for Staffordshire published 
by the William Salt Archaeological Society, give a consider- 
able body of material, not easily available before, which illus- 
trates the distribution and working of frankpledge in the twelfth 
century. The various judicial and municipal records also 
enable one to trace the system, and thus to check, and to a 
certain extent to correct, the conclusions of Palgrave. 

The works that best illustrate the working of the system in 
the municipalities are, besides Hudson's Leet Jurisdiction in 
Norwich already noticed, the Records of the Borough of Leicester 
edited by the late Miss Bateson, Oxford City Documents edited 
by Rogers, Stevenson's Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 
and the Records of the Borough of Northampton edited by Mark- 
ham and Cox. For London, Riley's edition of muniments in 
the Rolls Series is valuable. Some material on frankpledge in 
the boroughs is also to be found in the Rotuli Hundredorum 
and the Placita de Quo Warranto. Of secondary works on the 
boroughs that of Merewether and Stephens is most serviceable. 
Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law contains an ex- 
cellent but brief summary of the municipal frankpledge system. 

The most important class of material for the study of the 
real operation of frankpledge is, as hinted above, the court rolls, 
especially the assize rolls. The writer has been able to verify 
his conclusions from this class of printed records by an exami- 
nation of a considerable number of the manuscripts in the 



PREFACE xi 

Public Record Office. Toward making this kind of material 
on frankpledge available Maitland has done more than any one 
else. His Pleas of the Crown for the County of Gloucester and 
his Select Pleas of the Crown are especially valuable as showing 
how the royal justices supervised and made use of the system. 
Of equal importance are the Somersetshire Pleas, edited by 
Healey for the Somerset Record Society, and a similar collection 
of pleas for Staffordshire published by the Salt Archaeological 
Society. On the manorial side of frankpledge, Maitland's 
Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Hone's Manor and Manorial 
Records, and Bickley's extracts from the court rolls of Dul- 
wich manor (published in Young's History of Dulwich Col- 
lege) are the best printed collections, although there is a wealth 
of material scattered through many manorial court rolls. The 
law as to view of frankpledge is given by Bracton, and in the 
legal compilations of the time of Edward I known as Britton 
and Fleta. On the manorial view of frankpledge the Court 
Baron, edited by Maitland and Baildon, is invaluable. The 
work done by Maitland on the origin of leet procedure, and pub- 
lished in the introduction to his Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 
has revolutionized old theories as to the antiquity of the leet. 
It has, however, been supplemented lately by Hearnshaw's 
Leet Jurisdiction in England. 

The part of the work upon which it has been most difficult to 
find information is the decline of frankpledge; for in the four- 
teenth century, when specially assigned justices superseded the 
old justices in eyre as the trial judges in criminal pleas, the 
changed form of record did not mention the suretyship respon- 
sibility of the tithing. Occasional cases in the Year Books are 
of service here, as are also some works of the fifteenth and six- 
teenth centuries, among them Lambard's Duties of Constables, 
Powell's Antiquity of the Leet, and Kitchin's Court Leete and 



xii PREFACE 

Court Baron. After the failure of the assize rolls, however, the 
principal sources for this late period of frankpledge history are 
the manorial court records. Although the writer has been able 
to examine a good many of these in manuscript, no one can 
realize better than he how great is the probability that valuable 
information in regard to the later history of frankpledge lies 
hidden away in rolls which have not come to his attention. He 
can but hope that he has discovered the typical facts and cases 
which they present. 

The personal obligations of the writer throughout the time 
spent in the preparation of this study have been numerous. 
Above all he is indebted to his master, Professor Charles Gross 
of Harvard University, whose loss he has just been called to 
mourn in common with the world of historical scholarship. 
Professor Gross gave painstaking attention to this work at all 
stages; his wide acquaintance with medieval English records 
and his long experience in the art of research were brought to 
the writer's aid with characteristic generosity ; and in the days 
of his failing strength he devoted to the reading of the proof 
sheets his usual scrupulous care. Dean Haskins and Pro- 
fessor Merriman have also read the work in proof, and made 
numerous suggestions from which it has profited. Professor 
Vinogradoff of Oxford has shown a kindly interest in the work, 
and through Professor Gross made useful suggestions concern- 
ing matters connected with the origin of frankpledge. Mr. George 
Unwin of London has shown the same interest and the same 
willingness to aid. The writer gratefully acknowledges the uni- 
form courtesy which he has met with at the hands of the officials 
of the Public Record Office and of the British Museum. In the 
preparation of the manuscript his wife has constantly aided 
him; and to the reading and very helpful criticism of parts 
of it his friend Professor F. M. Padelford of the University 



PREFACE xiii 

of Washington has devoted time which under the pressure of his 
numerous duties he could ill afford to spend. A number of 
friends in Cambridge have given valuable assistance, among 
them in particular Mr. L. R. Wells, Dr. H. L. Gray, and 
Dr. F. A. Golder. To Miss A. F. Rowe the writer is under 
special obligation for verifying references to books cited in the 
footnotes of the first two chapters, to Dr. Golder for directing 
the work of verifying those in the remaining chapters. 

WILLIAM A. MORRIS. 
December, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

Origin of Frankpledge 

Page 

Nature of Frankpledge i 

Various suggested Origins 4 

Anglo-Saxon versus Anglo-Norman Origin 5 

Suggested Anglo-Saxon Originals 8 

The Borh System 15 

Norman Identification of Suretyship and Tithing 27 

Completion of the Frankpledge System 40 

CHAPTER II 

Distribution of Frankpledge 

Absence in Non-English Lands of English King 42 

Exceptions to Theory of General Prevalence in England .... 43 

The Doubtful Counties 45 

The Frankpledge Counties 59 

Prevalence of Frankpledge in Frankpledge Counties 60 

General Conclusions 67 

CHAPTER III 

Organization and Functions of Frankpledge 

Exceptions to Legal Rules as to Tithing Membership 69 

The Age of Frankpledge Responsibility 70 

Classes not in Frankpledge 71 

Classes in Frankpledge 84 

The Tithing 86 

Duties of Tithings 90 

The Capital Pledge 103 



xvi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

View of Frankpledge 

Page 

Early History of the Sheriff's Tourn 112 

View of Frankpledge as a Jurisdiction 116 

Sessions and Procedure of the Tourn 119 

View of Frankpledge Proper 127 

The Manorial Leet 131 

Seigniorial Acquisition of Leet Jurisdiction 133 

Royal Limitation of the Right 136 

Peculiarities of Leet Procedure 142 

The Borough Leet 147 

CHAPTER V 

Decline and Results of the Frankpledge System 

Thirteenth-century Inefficiency 151 

New Modes of Gaol Delivery 154 

Decline of Frankpledge Suretyship 155 

Late Survivals 158 

Results of the System 161 



APPENDICES 

A. Royal Writ for holding View of Frankpledge, 121 8 . . . . 169 

B. Oath of Persons put under Frankpledge in London, Fourteenth 

Century 169 

C. Tithing-list at Harston, Cambridgeshire, in the Reign of 

Richard II 170 

D. List of Works cited 172 

INDEX 185 



THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

CHAPTER I 
ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 

The use of suretyship in some form has characterized legal 
procedure from ancient times. Before the dawn of European 
history the system was already connected with civil process and 
with commercial as well as with criminal law. The present 
study has to do with this last-named phase of suretyship, 
which originated in early tribal custom, was retained as 
society advanced, and has in practically all stages of civilization 
served as a device to insure the appearance of law-breakers 
at trial. Although in the Middle Ages the plan was familiar 
to Germanic nations in general, it is probable that no people 
has, in the process of developing its legal institutions, followed 
more diverse modes of pledging in the interest of the public 
peace than have the Anglo-Saxons. Certainly no more highly 
centralized and thoroughgoing scheme of suretyship to secure 
order was ever devised on European soil than that which ex- 
isted in medieval England under the name of frankpledge. 

A definition of frankpledge is given by the earliest writer 
who attempts to describe the institution. "It is of this sort," 
says this twelfth-century scribe, "namely, that all men in every 
vill of the whole realm were by custom under obligation to be 
(debebant) in the suretyship of ten, 1 so that if one of the ten 

1 Or, more correctly, of a tithing. See Leges Edwardi Confessoris, xx, in 
Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 645; Thorpe, Ancient Laws, i. 450; Schmid, Gesetze, 

502. 

1 



2 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

commit an offence the nine have him to justice." * Frank- 
pledge, then, was a system of compulsory, collective bail, fixed 
for individuals not after their arrest for crime but as a safe- 
guard in anticipation of it. 

The name frankpledge, like the institution itself, first ap- 
pears in the second decade of the twelfth century. The desig- 
nation employed by the compiler of the Leges Henrici, the 
earliest authority on the subject, is the Latin form plegium 
liberate^ the literal translation of which into the Norman- 
French franc plege 3 becomes the origin of the ordinary 
English name. It was long the belief of scholars that the 
contemporary twelfth-century English name was frithborg 
(peace-pledge) ; but Liebermann has discovered that the au- 
thority of the older manuscripts is in favor of friborg (for 
freoborg, free-pledge), the exact etymological equivalent of the 
Latin and French terms. 4 The earliest name for frankpledge 
is almost certainly the old English one, for the early Norman 
writers have no distinctly French designation for it. Gneist 
undoubtedly gives the correct explanation when he suggests 
that the word ''belongs more to the popular language than to 
the laws." 5 The term seems not to have originated from 
the fact that those in frankpledge were legally held to be free 
men ; 6 it belongs rather to that period in late Anglo-Saxon 

1 Leges Edw. Conf., xx. i, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 645. 

2 Leges Henrici, viii. 2, ibid. 554; Schmid, Gesetze, 441; Thorpe, Laws, i. 515. 
8 French Leis Willelme, xx. 3a, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 506. 

4 Ibid. 645, ii. 81. In his Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf., 29, he shows that 
the corruption of friborg is easily explained both from the significance of the 
term and from its form; since the object of the arrangement was peace, since 
frith may, in addition to much else, signify the union of police and mutual re- 
sponsibility, and since a Frenchman could not utter the th sound. 

6 " ' Francplegium' is the Norman translation in the official vernacular of 
the times" (English Constitution, 151, note). 

6 Liebermann (Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf, 82) seems to incline toward 
this explanation; but almost any other form of pledging might have been 
called frankpledge for exactly the same reason. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 3 

history when the "free engagement of neighbour for neighbour" 
began to supersede the compulsory suretyship both of the lord 
for the dependent and of the kindred for the clansman. 1 

Historical accuracy demands an insistence that no kind of 
suretyship be called frankpledge unless it be clearly the one 
already described. The distinction between pledge and frank- 
pledge is vital. No amount of tempting speculation upon ety- 
mological or institutional origins can obliterate the line be- 
tween the peculiar mutual pledging of the groups of ten and 
all other forms. An error common to older writers is to read 
friborg (frithborg) into the Anglo-Saxon laws wherever borg 
(borh, surety) occurs, and thus to assume the existence of frank- 
pledge a century or so before the institution is ever mentioned. 2 
Any reference to a frankpledge system before the Norman 
Conquest must, however, in the absence of further evidence 
than that now obtainable, be regarded as misleading. 3 Mis- 
apprehension has also arisen from the confusion of frankpledge 
with forms of suretyship that were undoubtedly contemporary, 
such as ordinary bail, 4 and mainpast, or the compulsory pledg- 
ing by the lord for the servant whom he received. The latter 

1 See Green, Conquest of England, 229; also below, p. 25, note 3. 

2 This tendency begins with the leges of the twelfth century. See the trans- 
lation of the Lets of the Conqueror, ch. xxv (of about the year 1200), in Lieber- 
mann, Gesetze, i. 511. 

3 Although Vinogradoff (Growth of the Manor, 198) says that in the period 
of the last kings of English and Danish race the government introduced "a 
system of personal frankpledge," the present writer cannot but feel that the 
expression is unfortunate. Since only one definite system is ever designated as 
frankpledge, and since that one is not mentioned until the twelfth century, the 
propriety of referring to the transitional surety system of an earlier century by 
that name is more than doubtful. 

4 Farrer {Lancashire Pipe Rolls, 91, note) mistakenly says of three men, 
fined on account of a fourth whom they had pledged, that they were sureties 
according to the laws of frankpledge. Lord John Hervey, in his Extracts from the 
Hundred Rolls of Stiff oik (pp. 77, 119), has even translated the word replegiari 
"that he might be restored to frankpledge." 



4 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

system was, to be sure, closely connected with frankpledge 
from its beginnings, and was sometimes even loosely called 
frankpledge by writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; 1 
but in practice the two forms of suretyship were clearly distinct. 2 
The origin of the frankpledge tithing, or group of ten, with 
the compulsory responsibility of its members for each other has 
been variously attributed to the Romans, the primitive Ger- 
mans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Anglo-Normans. The theory 
of a Roman origin advanced by both Coote 3 and Finlason 4 
depends, like their assumptions in general concerning Roman 
influence on English institutions, merely on analogy. When 
one finds that the development of a Saxon borh system did not 
begin till some five centuries after there could have been any 
direct Roman influence, and recalls the grave doubts generally 
entertained as to whether any such influence was possible even 
during the Saxon conquest of Britain, one need give no further 
attention to this theory. 

1 Since suretyship of the lord for the dependent was the characteristic form 
of Saxon pledging from the tenth century on, and since this variety of borh 
was still to be found in the Norman period, when friborg was the prevailing 
mode, the danger of reading the later form into earlier conditions becomes all 
the greater. It is a copyist of the Leges Edwardi, apparently writing between 
1140 and 1159, who first makes friborg (frithborg) an equivalent for borh, de- 
scribing servants as in the former kind of suretyship {Leges Edw. Conf., xxi, in 
Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 647). According to a translation of about 1200, a French 
law requiring the lord to have his serving-men in his plege reads that he shall 
have them in franc pie gio (Pseudo-Ingulf version of the Lets Willehne, lii, ibid. 
519). Half a century later Bracton (De Legibus, Rolls Series, fol. 124 b, ii. 304, 
306) adopts the loose terminology of the copyist of the Leges Edwardi by speak- 
ing in one passage of the suretyship of servants as frankpledge, though in another 
he shows that the alternative for every man is either frankpledge or mainpast. 

2 As shown by the familiar entry in court rolls, "non in franco plegio nee de 
manupastu." The Leges Henrici (ch. viii. 2, 2a, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554) 
and the Assize of Clarendon (ch. x, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144) distinctly con- 
trast the two. 

3 Romans of Britain, 331-342. 

4 In his Introduction to Reeves's History of English Law, p. xlvi, note 3. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 5 

The view that the collective suretyship of the tithing was a 
common Germanic institution * has been refuted by Waitz, 2 
who shows that in the codes of the various Germanic peoples 
there is no word either for tithing (decenna) or for the head man 
of a tithing (decennus). While the latter is a perfectly famil- 
iar figure in English records, the Visigothic and the Frankish 
decenus was respectively a military commander and an over- 
seer of the property of king or nobles, and the Lombard deganus 
was a police officer. 3 No one of them was connected with any 
village or local community. 

The question that remains to be decided is, then, whether 
the institution which is the subject of this study first appeared 
in England in the Anglo-Saxon or in the Norman period, a 
point upon which there is naturally a difference of opinion; 
for, in the absence of direct, reliable evidence, writers on the 
subject have been forced to draw inferences from a few scanty 
facts. Frankpledge suretyship is first mentioned in England 
half a century after the Norman Conquest. What appears to 
have been its earliest name is a pure Anglo-Saxon word, but 
one not to be found before the days of Norman rule. Nowhere 
do the Anglo-Norman legal writers say that the system, for 
which the English people retain their own word, 4 is an Anglo- 
Saxon institution ; 5 but, as will appear later, some of them 
assume this as a fact. Domesday Book has no word for tithing 
and no mention of frankpledge, for as a financial survey it was 

1 This view is advanced by Moser, Rogge, and Eichorn. See Maurer, in 
Kritische Ueberschau, i. 87. 

2 Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, L 458-462. 

3 Mention of this official led some of the older English writers to suppose 
that frankpledge was imported into England from Lombardy. See Manchester 
Leet Records (Chetham Soc), prefatory chapter, p. 3, note 1. 

4 "Quam Angli vocant friborgas": Leges Edw. Conf., xx, in Liebermann, 
Gesetze, i. 645. 

5 Schmid, Gesetze, 647. 



6 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

not concerned with the question of suretyship. 1 The Saxon 
charters in the Codex Diplomaticus make no reference to the 
system, nor do the Norman charters from William I to Henry I 
seem to contain any allusion to frankpledge or to view of 
frankpledge. In vain does one look for enlightenment in 
any known record prior to the twelfth century. The rise of 
the institution belongs to the vast domain of unrecorded legal 
development. 

The definite medieval statements concerning the rise of 
frankpledge prove to be but traditions founded on inference. 
William of Malmesbury, the first of the chroniclers to mention 
the system, says in his Gesta Regum, written a little before 1125, 2 
that King Alfred originated the suretyship tithing as well as 
the hundred. 3 This assertion is, however, the merest con- 
jecture, accepted by no reliable modern authority, and appar- 
ently due to an old-time tendency to explain institutional be- 
ginnings by a single act of some great lawgiver. What William 
really does is to have Alfred put every Englishman in the surety- 
ship of a tithing two generations before Alfred's descendant, 
Edgar, made the finding of suretyship of any kind obligatory 
upon all freemen. William's statement seems to be the basis 
of a similar error in the thirteenth century; for the notoriously 
inaccurate Mirror of Justices, which was compiled in London 
probably between 1285 and 1290, represents Alfred as the 
founder of many English institutions, including view of frank- 
pledge. 4 The same opinion seems also to have been generally 
accepted by lawyers of the period; for in the quo warranto 
pleas of Edward I the king's attorneys set up the theory that 
view of frankpledge was a right vested in the crown by the con- 

1 Schmid, Gesetze, 648; Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edw. Con/., 81, note 1. 

2 See Stubbs's Introduction to the Gesta Regum (Rolls Series), i. p. xlx. 
8 Ibid. 129-130. 

4 Selden Society edition, p. 9. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 7 

quest of England, 1 the king, as will be seen later, being content 
to leave this franchise in the hands of those who could show 
continuous seisin by their ancestors from the time of Richard I. 
Even in these pleas, claims to view of frankpledge based on 
charters prior to n 90 were not admitted in court, for the reason 
that the right was never conveyed specifically, but was merely 
read into some vague or general expression. 2 So far as the quo 
warranto records show, the royal attorney's theory that view 
of frankpledge came down from Saxon times was never sus- 
tained against the criticism of this same attorney when it was 
advanced by a claimant to the franchise. The legend that 
Alfred was the founder of the frankpledge system had, never- 
theless, become fixed in English legal tradition, and was per- 
petuated in legal works as late as the seventeenth century. 3 

Of far greater value are the conclusions of modern authori- 
ties; and yet opinion is still well-nigh hopelessly divided be- 
tween those who hold that frankpledge was an Anglo-Saxon 
institution and those who believe that it had its rise under the 
Normans. The adherents of the former theory are the stronger 
in numbers and, during recent years, in authority as well, in- 
cluding not only Palgrave 4 and Kemble, 5 whose views are now 
largely superseded, but also Schmid, 6 Vinogradoff, 7 Maitland, 8 
and above all Llebermann, 9 the latest and greatest specialist to 

1 Plac. de Quo War., 303. 

2 Ibid. 93, 254, 456. Such a claim of the prior of Ely in Bergham by a grant 
of St. Edward is, indeed, sustained (ibid. 729); but in this case the grant is 
only in general terms, with no mention of view of frankpledge. 

3 As in Powell, Antiquity of the Leet, 8. 

4 Commonwealth, i. 202; ii. p. cxxiii. 

5 Saxons in England, i. 243-251. 

6 Gesetze, 646-648. 

7 Growth of the Manor, 198. 

8 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), *• 55&; Maitland, Domesday 
Book and Beyond, 284. 

9 Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf, 81, note 1. 



8 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

investigate the subject. Yet the adoption of the Anglo-Norman 
theory by Gneist, 1 the able Marquardsen, 2 and the great con- 
stitutional historians Waitz 3 and Stubbs, 4 still gives good 
standing to the opposing school. The question as to the origin 
of frankpledge remains an open one. For the present, at least, 
an opinion must rest merely on a review of the facts concern- 
ing both Saxon and Norman peace suretyship which have been 
brought out in a half-century of discussion by some of the 
world's best scholarship. 

In Anglo-Saxon England there were three different institu- 
tions which have at one time or another been regarded as bear- 
ing some relation to the early history of frankpledge. These 
were the gegildan or gild-brethren, the teothing or tithing (in 
the Latin of the records, decenna), and borh or suretyship 
(Latin, plegium, fideiussio). Information concerning all three 
is derived exclusively from the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, which, 
though formally enacted and recorded, give at best, like all other 
early Germanic codes, but a partial view of the legal system of 
the people. Of the three institutions, borh is the only one 
mentioned any considerable number of times. An understand- 
ing of the gegildan and the tithing can be had only by the piec- 
ing together of a very few meagre references. 

The gegildan, who appear both in the laws of Ine 5 and in 
those of Alfred, were associates, one of whose objects, though 
probably not the only one, was the supplementing of the maegth 
bond by assumption of the legal obligation of the kindred when- 
ever the family group was deficient. In the laws of Alfred it is 
provided that if a man have no paternal kinsmen his associates 

1 English Constitution, 152. 

2 Haft und Burgschaft, 60 ff. 

3 Verfassungsgeschichte, i. 453. 

4 Constitutional History, i. 94-95. 

5 Chs. xvi, xxi, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 96, 98; Thorpe, Laws, i. 112, 116. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 9 

are to pay a third of his wergeld, and that if he lack maternal 
kinsmen also these gegildan are to pay half. 1 It is thus as- 
sumed that a man will have gild-brethren even though he have 
no relatives. The theory of Waitz, that these were only volun- 
tary sureties, 2 has been refuted by the observation of Kemble, 
that the law was expressed in general terms and consequently 
not "directed to a particular and exceptional condition." 3 
These gegildan, moreover, were not, as has been supposed, 
altogether "the associates of strangers and kinless people"; 4 
according to Ine's law, 5 as Gross has pointed out, they had 
relatives, apparently living in the same community with them- 
selves. 6 Obviously a man whose paternal maegth was intact 
might need the aid of gildsmen in making good any deficiencies 
due to a failure of the maternal line, or vice versa. The institu- 
tion has a demonstrable bearing on the origin of frankpledge 
only as showing an early tendency in West Saxon law to sub- 
stitute for the mutual responsibility of the maegth a similar 
mutual responsibility of a non-kindred group. All authorities 
have long since rejected the old error of assuming that the 
association of the gegildan is identical with the frankpledge 
tithing ; 7 but the student of primitive law still finds himself 
irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that, in the two centuries 
between Alfred and Henry I, when there is no mention of the 
gegildan, the legal principle of the old Saxon institution had 
considerable influence on frankpledge origins. 8 

1 Alfred, xxvii, xxvii.i, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 66-67. 

2 Verfassungsgeschichte, i. 434. 

3 Saxons in England, i. 239. 

4 Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 96, note 1. 

5 Ch. xxi, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 98-99. 
8 Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 177, note 2. 

7 Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 243. 

8 "A germ of the institution of compulsory frankpledge (freeborgh) may be 
seen in the voluntary association of the gegildan of Alfred's law, 27" (Vino- 



io THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

The Anglo-Saxon tithing first appears in a local adaptation, 
for purposes of protection against theft, of the gild principle of 
mutual duty and mutual financial responsibility. In the reign 
of Athelstan the bishops and reeves of the court of London 
ordained for the frithgegildan "eorlish and ceorlish" the set of 
regulations well known as the Judicia Civitatis Lundoniae. 1 
According to these rules, Londoners were organized into groups 
of ten, each with a chief man to direct the other nine in the 
discharge of the duties set forth in the ordinance. 2 The tens 
were in turn arranged in larger groups called hyndens or hun- 
dreds, the head man of each directing ten heads of tithings. 
These tithings were, however, far from being frankpledge 
groups ; for their members did not act as sureties for each other. 
Their object was merely the capture and punishment of thieves, 
and the reimbursing of their own members for stolen property. 
Waitz has felicitously called such associations companies for 
insurance against cattle theft. 3 As if to emphasize the difference 
between these tithings and those formed to afford suretyship 
for criminous members, the very ordinance directing the estab- 
lishment of this London organization requires specifically a 
definite form of borh for a thief who is captured — preferably 
through his maegth,* but by pledge of others when the kinsmen 

gradoff, Growth of the Manor, 277, note 78). Konrad Maurer (in Kritische 
Ueberschau, i. 91) also believes that frithborg must have taken the place of 
gegildan. 

1 Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 173; Thorpe, Laws, i. 228. See also Liebermann, 
"Einleitung zum Statut der Londoner Friedensgilde unter Aethelstan," in 
Melanges Fitting, ii. 79-103 (especially pp. 90-94, on the meaning of 
"Friedensgilde"). 

2 Judicia, iii, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 175; Thorpe, Laws, i. 231. 

3 Verfassungsgeschichte, i. 434. 

4 6 Athelstan, i. 4, xii. 2, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 174, 183. This is but 
a continuance of the borh system enforced by the three councils of Grateley, 
Exeter, and Thundersfield, in conformity with the mandates of which the Lon- 
don decree was enacted. See 6 Athelstan, Prol., ibid. 173. Cf. also 5 Athelstan, 
Prol., 3, and 4 Athelstan, ii, ibid. 166, 171. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE n 

will not serve. Further differences between the frithgild and 
the frankpledge tithing are that the former was for eorls as well 
as ceorls, the latter for the lower classes only, the former for 
London alone/ the latter for the realm in general. The tithing 
of this local experiment is thus a peculiar institution, entirely 
different from the frankpledge tithing, and also quite distinct 
from the ordinary Anglo-Saxon police tithing, which had no 
gild feature. 2 

The police tithing makes its appearance in recorded legisla- 
tion a little later than the London institution, which in the 
absence of any definite information is thus naturally, though of 
course with no degree of certainty, taken to be its prototype. 3 
Its head, the tithingman, is mentioned in the laws of Edgar 
and Ethelred as a recognized peace official, a sort of under- 
constable, who, like the head of the London ten of Athelstan's 
reign, is directed by a hundredman. 4 The tithing itself as an 
institution of the realm is expressly mentioned in the laws of 
Canute some seventy years later, and every free man is then 
required to be a member of one. 5 Liebermann's discovery 
that in an Anglo-Saxon Bible of about the year iooo the captain 
of ten, the decanus of the Vulgate, is translated teothingrnan? 

1 At about the same time a set of local enactments for Kent, without tithing 
or gegildan, was decreed by a local witan for the purpose of carrying out the 
same invocation of the king for the bettering of the peace of the realm in 
accordance with which the London ordinance was made. See 3 Athelstan, v, 
in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 170. 

2 Konrad Maurer (in Kritische Ueberschau, i. 95) agrees with the generally 
accepted idea that the London frith gild tithing and hundred have nothing in com- 
mon with the tithing and hundred found elsewhere in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. 

3 It is entirely possible that the London frithgild had modelled its tithing 
and hundred on a regular territorial tithing and hundred of the realm. 

4 1 Edgar, ii, iv (about A. d. 960), in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 192-193; 
Thorpe, Laws, i. 258. Cf. also "tungravius et decimales homines," 7 Ethelred, 
ii. 5 (a. d. 992-1011), in Liebermann, i. 261. 

5 2 Canute, xx, in Liebermann, i. 322-323; Thorpe, i. 386. 

6 Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf, 80. 



12 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

shows quite clearly that at the beginning of the eleventh century 
the head of the tithing was a well-known official of the realm, 
and that the tithing itself, which he led, was certainly known 
just as well. The two questions concerning this institution 
which have perplexed historians are whether it was a terri- 
torial or a personal division, and whether it had any connection 
with the origin of frankpledge. 

The theory that the tithing was a fraction of the Anglo-Saxon 
hundred naturally presents itself; for not only does the word 
teothing mean a tenth, 1 but the head of the tithing was under 
the direction of the head of the hundred, and the London frith- 
gild tithing was actually a tenth of a hundred. From this sug- 
gested numerical relation many writers have undertaken to 
demonstrate a symmetrical development of Anglo-Saxon local 
institutions. The analogy of the German territorial hundred, as 
well as the undoubted territorial character of the English hun- 
dred at a little later period, incline the majority to believe that 
the hundred of the law of Edgar was a territorial division of the 
shire. If, then, the tithing be regarded as a tenth of a hundred, 
it can scarcely be held to be anything else than territorial, 2 

1 The name is thus applied to the church tithe (see 2 Edgar, i. i, in Lieber- 
mann, Gesetze, i. 196-197). The employment of tithingmen along with the 
town reeve and the priest to enforce alms and fasting vowed upon the sacred 
relics (7 Ethelred, ii. 5) shows how the ordinary police power in Anglo-Saxon 
days extended to ecclesiastical as well as to secular offences. Since the church 
tithe had been compulsory from the year 787 onward (Stubbs, Constitutional 
History, i. 248-250), it is not improbable that the tithingman was employed 
in the collection of it, and that the name by which he was called arose from 
this circumstance. Edgar carefully revised the regulations concerning the 
tithe; and the words "decimales homines" in the laws of Ethelred (above, p. 11, 
note 4) seem to point to an ecclesiastical origin of the name tithingman. If 
this interpretation is correct, the tithing of Anglo-Saxon law is clearly terri- 
torial, and is to be identified with the parish or township ; furthermore, the thir- 
teenth-century use of the word tithing as a synonym for the township of the 
old West Saxon kingdom can thus be easily explained. 

2 Marquardsen (Haft, 46) and Schmid (Gesetze, 648) hold that the tithing 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 13 

although the language of the laws shows that membership in 
the tithing of Canute was a personal matter, just as membership 
in the court representing the hundred was personal. But, what- 
ever the original nature of the tithing, it is clear enough that any 
system of policing based upon it must have approached, roughly 
at least, a territorial basis; for it was essential to the successful 
pursuit of a thief, not only that the tithing live in the neighbor- 
hood of the crime, 1 but that the members live near enough to- 
gether for co-operation. The tithing which is found in the shires 
of the old West Saxon kingdom in the thirteenth century, and 
which at the present time exists nowhere in England except in 
these and sporadically in the adjacent shires, 2 was and is simply 
the local division elsewhere called the township ; 3 and the tith- 
ingman was a township reeve who still had police and court 
duties by virtue of his position. 4 Nor can the theory that there 
were ten tithings in a hundred be lightly set aside ; for even in 

was purely territorial; but Gneist (Verwaltungsrecht, i. 51) believes that the 
hundred was territorial and the tithing a police division. 

1 Edgar's ordinance (1 Edgar, ii), which represents the initiative as coming 
from the hundredman, contemplates a situation under which it is necessary to 
call out more than one tithingman. The matter must first be made known to 
the hundredman; but it is hardly to be presumed that in ordinary cases pur- 
suit was deferred until it could be authorized by a distant hundredman. 

2 Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 92, note 2. 

3 To the possible objection that, if the tithing which was represented as com- 
mon to the realm was territorial in the time of Canute, it should be found all 
over England to-day, there are two answers: (1) It is probable that the legis- 
lation of the West Saxon rulers was not strictly enforced in all parts of England; 
(2) The township may have been considered the equivalent of a tithing in the 
eleventh century just as well as in the thirteenth. 

4 Such a tithing was created in the thirteenth century by a decree requiring 
the ordinary township suit of court where it had not been enjoined before {Cal- 
endar of Charter Rolls, ii. 94). In the later period the tithingman frequently 
appears as the head of a frankpledge tithing; but it is by no means clear that 
this was always the case. The suit of court for the tithing was performed by the 
tithingman and four, just as that for the township was performed by the reeve 
and four. In Kent, where the tithing was called a borgh, such suit was by the 
borhsealdor and four. See below, p. 99. 



14 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

the fourteenth century, after two hundred and fifty years of radi- 
cal reorganization of English institutions, the number of tithings 
in a hundred in the former kingdom of Wessex was still in many 
cases near the number ten. 1 

The relation of the police tithing of Saxon England to the 
frankpledge tithing of Norman England must, then, be decided 
almost entirely on probability. The undeniably personal char- 
acter of the police service rendered by the members of the Anglo- 
Saxon tithing at once suggests that, even if the tithing be 
regarded as a territorial institution, it nevertheless had some re- 
lation to the frankpledge group, which performed personal police 
service of a very similar nature. Moreover, the employment of 
a person at the head of the frankpledge tithing so nearly like 
the tithingman that twelfth-century writers assume the identity 
of the two, and the legal theory that the frankpledge group, like 
the London frithgild tithing of Athelstan, must consist of ten 
men, both indicate that, either directly or through tradition, the 
older tithing exercised a considerable influence upon the frank- 
pledge group. Between the two there is, however, one funda- 
mental difference, overlooked by older authorities, which at 
once precludes the idea that the tithing of the Anglo-Saxon laws 
is the original form of its namesake of frankpledge days. This 
difference lies in the fact that the former had nothing to do with 
suretyship, but was concerned only with the capture of criminals. 
The passage in the laws of Canute, of about 1030, requiring 
every free man above the age of twelve who wishes to be worthy 
of his lad and his wer to be in hundred and in tithing, and every 
one, whether hearth-fast or follower, to be in hundred and in 
surety (borh), 2 has sometimes been construed as showing that 

1 See Feudal Aids, vols, i-ii, nomina villarum in 13 16 for Bucks, Dorset, 
Gloucester, and Hants. 

2 2 Canute, xx, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 322-323; Thorpe, Laws, i. 386. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 15 

the tithing was a borh tithing; but the mere fact of the other- 
wise useless repetition proves the contrary. 1 The obvious truth 
is that at this time membership in a tithing did not provide a 
man with suretyship against breach of the peace; for, accord- 
ing to these same laws of Canute, the very classes of persons 
for whom a suretyship requirement was most necessary — those 
disobedient to summons, those suspected of crime, and those 
once convicted — had to find borh for themselves. 2 The con- 
trary and erroneous view, held generally until within the last 
half -century, is due to the compiler of the so-called Leges Henrici 
(about 1 1 15), who makes the first mention of frankpledge. His 
version of this law of Canute, made to suit the conditions of his 
own time, is that every one who wishes to be considered worthy 
of his wer and wite and free law shall be in hundred and in tith- 
ing or frankpledge, and that all freemen, both hearth-fast and 
retainers, shall be in tithing? How the tithing could so have 
changed in the eighty-five years spanning the Norman Conquest 
that it was no longer recognized in its earlier form, is a matter 
which is to be explained only by the history of Saxon borh or 
suretyship. 
The word borh (or borg, as it is sometimes written) was em- 

1 Ramsay's attempt (in his Foundations of England, i. 410) to prove that 
this is repetition depends on the statement of a twelfth-century writer who had 
been influenced by nearly a century of legal misconstruction of the passage to 
identify the tithing of Canute with the familiar frankpledge tithing of his day. 
So firm a believer in the Saxon origin of frankpledge as Liebermann (Ueber die 
Leges Edw. Conf., 81) regards this passage as a proof that borh and tithing 
were still distinct. Marquardsen (Haft, 53) goes too far in assuming that the 
heorthfest and folgere were not free because under a lord's borh, and were there- 
fore not the same class of persons as those in tithing. 

2 2 Canute, xxx. sa-b, xxxi, xxxiii, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 332-337 passim. 

3 Leges Henrici, viii. 1-2, ibid, 554. See the account of Stubbs (Consti- 
tutional History, i. 95), who, not having the advantage of Liebermann's dating 
of the leges of the twelfth century, supposed that it was the compiler of the 
Leges Edward Confessoris who first made this error. 



16 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

ployed in Saxon England to designate suretyship in general. 1 
It was used, for example, of the security given for the carrying 
out of a marriage contract, 2 of security for a debt, and conse- 
quently of the debt itself. 3 Even the assurance of the fulfilment 
of a promise made by calling upon God as a witness was called 
Godborg.* It was, however, with the use of borh as a means of 
securing justice of the criminal that the Saxon legislators of the 
tenth and eleventh centuries were chiefly concerned. 

The origin of this latter form of suretyship is to be found in 
the responsibility of the maegth, or clan, for injuries committed 
by any of its members upon men of another clan. Such liability 
for paying the wergeld made clansmen in a sense sureties for 
each other. The state, as soon as it became strong enough to 
interfere in such matters, aided the injured in exacting repara- 
tion, and eventually came to stand itself in the light of a clan 
which held the kinsmen of wrongdoers responsible to the crown 
for rendering satisfaction for the crimes of their relatives. Thus, 
near the end of the seventh century occurs the earliest reference 
to borh for peace observance in the requirement of the Kentish 
laws of Hlothaere and Eadric that, if a man make complaint 
against another and cite him to appear either in the folk as- 
sembly or in a local court, the accused must give security to the 
complainant to do him justice as the Kentish magistrates pre- 
scribe. 5 In the same laws it is provided that a man who enter- 
tains at his house for more than three nights a stranger who 
comes over the mark shall, if any injury is done by his guest, 
be surety for him. After three nights the stranger becomes a 
member of the household and hence, in legal presumption, of 

1 Alfred, i. 8, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 48-49. 

2 Ine, xxxi, ibid. 102-103. 

8 Wright, Vocabularies, i. 21, 78, 115, 237, 358. 

4 Alfred, xxxiii, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 66-67. 

5 Hlothaere and Eadric, viii, ibid. 10; Thorpe, Laws, i. 30. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 17 

the family ; * if he does any injury, therefore, the head of the 
household either must see that he appears in court and by a 
payment makes good the damage, or must himself make it 
good. 

A few years later in the same century a similar modification 
of the collective responsibility of the kindred appears in West 
Saxon law. "If your geneat steals," says the law, "and escapes, 
if you have a pledge for him, remind him of the value of the 
stolen thing; if he has no pledge you pay." 2 The borh here is 
but one person, and possibly not of the offender's kindred ; for 
the usual rules do not hold in the case of a man who is depend- 
ent upon a lord and perhaps of unfree status. According to a 
law of Edward the Elder, even the freeman with property, when 
accused of theft, was to be taken in borh by those who had com- 
mended him to his lord, that he might purge himself at the 
ordeal; or other friends might act in the same capacity. If 
the accused knew no one who would be pledge for his fulfilling 
his law, security might be taken of his property, and he might 
thus escape confinement pending judgment. 3 This near ap- 
proach to modern bail was, however, not the rule when freemen 
had actually been convicted of crime; for even in the reign of 
Athelstan it was assumed that those who undertook responsibil- 
ity for a man actually proved guilty by the ordeal were his 
relatives. 4 The state held a thief responsible in the amount of 
his wergeld? and those who paid wergeld were the clansmen. 

From this presumption that the maegth was ultimately respon- 

1 Hlothaere and Eadric, xv, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 11. 

2 Ine, xxii, ibid. 98-99. 

3 2 Edward, iii, iii. 1, ibid. 142-143. 

* 2 Athelstan, vi. 1, vii, ibid. 154-155. The man without land who served 
in another county was to be pledged by his relatives when he returned to visit 
them if they lodged him during the visit (2 Athelstan, viii, ibid.). 

5 2 Athelstan, i. 1, ibid. 150-151. 



18 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

sible for the deeds of one of its number arose a form of suretyship 
for custody which served the purpose of the modern bond to keep 
the peace. If through failure to find surety or borh an accused 
person went to prison, he might on payment of a heavy fine be 
released after a certain number of days upon condition that his 
clansmen would consent to act as sureties for his future good 
conduct. 1 If he repeated the crime of theft, they had either to 
pay his wergeld or to return him to prison. This responsibil- 
ity of the maegth as a guarantee of good behavior was also 
employed in the case of men often accused of such crimes as 
arson and witchcraft, as well as of those convicted at the ordeal. 2 
The general prevalence of commendation and of dependence 
upon lords afforded a convenient means for the wider extension 
of permanent suretyship. Before the middle of the tenth cen- 
tury such security was employed for men of the lower class who 
had no lords, and who, because neither they nor their kindred 
had standing in the community, could be brought to justice only 
with difficulty. 3 The maegth of such a person was required to 
find him a lord to insure his appearance. Surety to keep the 
peace effected through the maegth thus tended, in a modified 
form, to become surety to lead men to justice whenever they 
were guilty of delinquency. In the reign of Athelstan is found 
a Kentish regulation holding a lord responsible for pledging all 
his men, — either directly, or, if there were many of them, indi- 
rectly through a representative in each vill, — and empowering 
him to require the relatives of a dependent to assume responsi- 
bility only when the reputation of the man was such that the 
lord's reeve would not undertake the risk of standing pledge 
for him. In such cases the discredited person had to find twelve 

1 2 Athelstan, i. 3, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 150-151. 

2 2 Athelstan, vi, vi. 1-2, ibid. 152-155 passim. 

3 2 Athelstan, ii, ibid. 150-15 1. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 19 

of his kinsmen to act as pledges for him. 1 These relatives con- 
stituted a group somewhat similar to the frankpledge tithing, 
which will presently be observed more closely. 

After Athelstan required that lordless men have standing 
suretyship the development of the borh system was rapid. In 
the next reign, that of Edmund, the lord was held responsible 
for making law-worthy whatever men were on his lands, and 
the officers were also required to bring under pledge all men 
oft accused and all of ill report. 2 Finally, about 960, in a law 
of Edgar appeared the last step in the establishment of general 
peace suretyship. Every man was now to see that he had a 
pledge to lead him to the fulfilment of justice in all cases ; and 
this pledge, if the principal fled, was bound to stand in his place 
and bear what the criminal ought to bear. 3 Such was the 
unique plan for enforcing law that was followed for the century 
preceding the end of Saxon rule ; but, as subsequent enactments 
show, it included only the freemen of the realm of the poorer, or 
non-noble, class, 4 and it did not compel members of a lord's 
household establishment whom he lodged to seek for surety, 
the lord being required to have them in his own borh. 5 

The borh pledge was constituted in two ways: according to 
the law of Edgar an ordinary person needed only one surety, 
but for the man of bad reputation there must be several. 6 The 
first method declined for a time in scope, and then remained 
stationary as long as English law required peace suretyship; 
it is the development of the second that throws light on the 
origin of frankpledge. 

1 3 Athelstan, vii, vii. 1-2, in Liebermann, Gesetze, 170. 

2 3 Edmund, vii, vii. 1, from Quadripartitus, ibid. 191. 

3 3 Edgar, vi, vi. 1, ibid. 202-203. 

4 1 Ethelred, Prol., and i, i. 8, 9a, 10, 12, 13; 2 Canute, xx, xxa: ibid. 216- 
219, 322-323. 

5 1 Ethelred, i. 10; 2 Canute, xxxi: ibid. 218-219, 334-335. 

6 3 Edgar, vi. 2, vii, ibid. 202-205. 



20 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

When one person served as borh it seems always to have been 
the lord who assumed the old responsibility of the maegth. It 
has been observed that in Athelstan's time the Kentish lord, or 
his reeve for him, had to act as borh against theft for all his 
dependents in his vills except such as were of bad reputation, 
a class still pledged by their kindred. The law of Edmund 
made the lord surety for all who were on his lands and in his 
peace. From the time of Athelstan, persons without property 
who were likely to become criminals were required to be under 
lordship, that they might the more easily be brought to account. 
In the reigns of Edgar and Ethelred it was regularly taken for 
granted that an oft-accused, or tyhtbysig, man would have a 
lord, who was so far responsible for him that he had to be recom- 
pensed in case the person fled under accusation, 1 but who may 
have put the burden of obligation for such a dependent upon his 
reeve. 2 In the reigns of Edmund, Ethelred, and Canute, special 
legislation made the lord borh for the members of his own house- 
hold, his hiredmen, whose wergeld he had to pay to the king if 
any of them were not produced for judgment when accused. 3 
Legal writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries show that 
the lord or the man of rank presented to justice only his house- 
hold or mainpast. This small part of the population was thus 
never brought under reciprocal suretyship, and hence is removed 
from any connection with the formation of a real frankpledge 
system. The greater number were, however, gradually drawn 
to collective pledging. 

The Anglo-Saxon custom of presenting an offender to justice 
through a borh group of several persons is mentioned only when 
such an offender is either a tyhtbysig man or a man once con- 

1 3 Edgar, vii. i; i Ethelred, i. 7: Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 204-205, 218-219. 

2 See above, p. 18. 

3 3 Edmund, iii; 1 Ethelred, i. 10-11; 2 Canute, xxxi, xxxia, xxxi.i: ibid. 
190, 218-219, 334-335- 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 21 

victed of crime. In the reign of Athelstan it was assumed that 
these sureties would be the criminal's kinsmen. Twelve, it has 
been said, was the number of the maegth required to act as 
surety for a Kentish man of untrustworthy character. Athel- 
stan's laws show that, if a man had been accused or convicted 
once, his maegth were regularly expected to stand borh for him 
against a second offence, 1 a circumstance that proves the exist- 
ence of group surety for certain contingencies in parts of 
England other than Kent. Moreover, the Kentish maegth 
group of twelve for surety purposes had strong affinity with 
certain other maegth groups in England. It seems, for ex- 
ample, more than a coincidence that its number was exactly 
the same as that of the werborh, whom, according to the law 
of Edmund, the slayer of a man had to find among his 
relatives to stand surety for the payment of the dead man's 
wer to the injured maegth. 2 Again, according to a law which 
Liebermann considers as belonging somewhere between 944 
and 1060, and which no doubt follows an ancient clan cus- 
tom, the werborg in case of the killing either of a twelfhynd 
or of a twyhynd man consisted of twelve men. 3 Even in the 
twelfth century, as the late Miss Bateson has shown, com- 
purgators were in London and some other English boroughs 

1 2 Athelstan, i. 3-4, vi.i, vii, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 150-155 passim. 

2 2 Edmund, vii, vii. 1-2, ibid. 188-191. 

3 Wergeldzahlung, iii, vii, ibid. 392-395 passim. Eight were to be from the 
maegth of the slayer's father, four from the maegth of his mother. The Leges 
Edw. Con/., xxxvi. 1 (ibid. 666), say twelve from the father's maegth and six 
from the mother's ; but this is a late and less reliable authority. A provision in 
the regulations for the Northumberland priests, of a date within forty years 
prior to the Norman Conquest, seems to show an ecclesiastical modification of 
this usage in requiring that each priest shall find twelve pledges for his ob- 
servance of the regulations. A breaking of them usually entailed a fine of twelve 
ore, which was also the amount of the manbote of the sokeman and villanus in 
the Danelaw. See Leges Edw. Con/., xii. 4, ibid. 638. 



22 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

twelve in number, and were required to be kinsmen of the prin- 
cipal; and in London the number of borh pledges enjoined was 
also twelve. It is reasonable, therefore, to accept her suggestion 
that the twelve kinsmen who served as sureties and compurga- 
tors are to be connected with the origin of the frankpledge 
group, the unit which succeeded to the responsibility of the 
maegthborh. 1 That such group suretyship may be traced to 
within about three decades of the year 1066 is shown by the law 
of Edmund requiring the reeve and the thegn, under heavy pen- 
alties, to put in borh the oft-accused man and the man of ill 
report, 2 by the repetition in the laws of Ethelred and Canute of 
enactments to enforce this duty, 3 and by the requirement, re- 
peated in the laws of both the last-named kings, that the man 
who failed at the ordeal must have trustworthy sureties (borgas) 
against future misconduct. 4 The persistence of the responsibil- 
ity of the kindred, therefore, indicates that the principle of borh 
through a group of twelve continued in force as late as the Nor- 
man Conquest at least. 

A process by which collective borh became more and more 
prevalent during the last century of Anglo-Saxon rule, while 
the borh of the lord was employed less and less frequently, is 
reasonably clear, though it is not a matter of record. All free- 
men had to be in borh, and there were apparently only the two 
forms. It was in the interest of the lord to have the collective 
form employed whenever possible ; for, when the man of doubt- 
ful reputation was disavowed and put under the suretyship of 
his kinsmen, the lord was freed from a grievous responsibility. 
Moreover, when there was any question as to a defendant's 

1 Bateson, Borough Customs (Selden Soc), ii. pp. xxiv, xxviii. 

2 3 Edmund, vii. 2, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 191. 

3 1 Ethelred, iv. iv. 1; 2 Canute, xxxiii. xxxiii. 1: ibid. 220-221, 336- 

337- 

4 1 Ethelred, i. 5; 2 Canute, xxx. 3a-&: ibid. 218-219, 2,Z 2 ~2>?>2>- 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 23 

standing, the lord could not have been slow to take advantage 
of a doubt that would clear himself of liability. Furthermore,, 
it is quite certain that for a long time before the Norman Con- 
quest some lords held justiciary rights which gave them a special 
means of regulating the borh of their dependents through the 
control of a hundred court, 1 the agency that maintained the 
borh system. Maitland holds that, according to the old law 
requiring any one who had an accusation against a lord's de- 
pendent to seek justice first of the lord, 2 the latter had the option 
either of producing the offender in court, or of settling the 
demand of the accuser and exacting from the defendant both 
the amount of the claim and a wite for himself. 3 Such a scheme 
would naturally incline the lord to look sharply to the mainte- 
nance of group suretyship for all those likely to be accused, 
that he might at least have a means of producing them when 
required, but particularly that he might be assured of the pay- 
ment of the wite which he gained by settling the matter himself. 4 
When in addition to these seigniorial influences, which Maitland 
regards as sufficient to explain the origin of frankpledge, 5 it is 
considered that the borh of a group of neighbors or kinsmen 
was far more effective both as a deterrent from crime and as a 
means of apprehension than that of the lord could possibly be, 6 
it need occasion no surprise to find that by the twelfth century 
the responsibility of the lord was limited to the members of his 

1 Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 260-290, especially 260, 268-269. 

2 Athelstan's Grateley Law, 2 Athelstan, iii, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 152- 

*53« 

3 Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 284. 

4 This principle is a development based on two centuries of experience with 
the law of Ine: "If your geneat steals and escapes, if you have a pledge for him, 
remind him of the value of the stolen thing; if he has no pledge you pay." See 
above, p. 17. 

5 Domesday Book and Beyond, 284. 

6 It is this feature of collective responsibility in criminal matters that ex- 
plains the popularity and rapid rise of the police tithing. 



24 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

immediate household, while all others were under collective 
suretyship. 

A striking change that seems to have come over the borh 
group between 950 and n 15 is the loss of its maegth character, 
a change that was in keeping with the decline of the maegth in 
all directions during the same period and with the correspond- 
ing increase in the power of the state. Though this change is 
never specifically mentioned in the law codes, a hint of it is to 
be found in the fact that, whereas in the laws of Athelstan col- 
lective suretyship always appears as maegth suretyship, in the 
laws of Ethelred and Canute there is merely the general re- 
quirement of sureties, with nothing to indicate that such vouch- 
ers were expected to be of the offender's kindred. Besides this 
inevitable tendency toward a change that set in as society gained 
the conception of a higher principle of organization than through 
the clan, the influence of lordship and the severity of the criminal 
law were factors bringing the borh group away from a maegth 
basis. The personal service of a man to his lord was, indeed, 
one of the most potent impulses in weakening the old maegth 
bond and in preparing the way for a new European society, 
especially since, with the growth of lordship, there came a cor- 
responding increase of group pledging as a means of decreasing 
the lord's personal responsibility for his dependents. No one 
can conceive of a lord's making it obligatory that the twelve 
who took off his hands the responsibility for an unruly depend- 
ent should uniformly be of the man's maegth; for at times it 
was clearly impossible to find that number, and, even when 
possible, it was in many cases not the easiest means of effecting 
what the lord desired. Furthermore, in the reigns of Ethelred 
and Canute the man of bad reputation, for whom the lord 
would under no condition be accountable even half a century 
earlier, was compelled either by the reeve or by the posse 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 25 

from the hundred court to find borh under penalty of forfeiting 
his life and filling a felon's grave. 1 Such a law admits of little 
stickling on the point that a man's sureties be his relatives. In 
the failure of the tnaegth, in its refusal to serve, or in the decline 
of its old responsibility, it must have been practically impossible 
that any sufficient person, who through pity or friendship would 
assume part of the obligation to save life, should not be an 
acceptable surety. In the Danelaw, moreover, — that part of 
England where personal lordship seems to have been least fre- 
quent, and where the frankpledge group of a later age was ap- 
parently most independent of the territorial unit, — there was 
no maegih organization, 2 a circumstance from which it may be 
regarded as certain that collective suretyship for most of the 
men was effected here simply through a number of neighbors. 
By Canute's time the same plan must also have been followed 
to a large extent in other parts of England. 3 

Reviewing the available information concerning Anglo- 
Saxon borh down to the enactment of the laws of Canute, one 
finds that a comparison of that institution with frankpledge 
reveals striking similarities, but no less striking contrasts. 
Both systems were of vast importance in securing peace ob- 
servance among the lower classes, each being in its day, to 
borrow Green's expression, "the base of social order." 4 In 
each was apparent a conscious direction by a general authority 

1 1 Ethelred, iv, iv. 1; 2 Canute, xxxiii, xxxiii. 1: Liebermann, Gesetze, 

i. 220-221, 336-337. 

2 This the writer has upon the authority of Professor Vinogradoff. 

3 Green {Conquest of England, 229) is thus right in supposing that the borh 
of this period was founded on the "free engagement of neighbour for neighbour" ; 
but he errs in assuming that it was frankpledge. Kemble {Saxons in England, 
i. 251-252) suggests that such a system in the hands of the neighborhood had 
an advantage over one founded upon kinship, in that it obviated an improper 
partiality to some of the members, a tendency inherent in the bond of blood. 

4 Conquest of England, 229. 



26 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

in painstaking legislation and administrative regulation, a fact 
which clearly shows that, in spite of all the acquisition of juris- 
dictional power and influence by lords, the hand in control was 
that of the central government. The local supervision of 
Saxon borh and Norman frankpledge rested with the same 
tribunal, the hundred court, 1 which probably held two sessions 
a year chiefly for the purpose of administering the detail of the 
earlier plan, just as it held two for the execution of the later 
one. 2 Excluding from Saxon borh the class pledged by lords 
(a class never in frankpledge proper but still found in the frank- 
pledge age), each system put under suretyship all the rest of 
the men of the realm who were of non-noble status, 3 and each 
put them under collective suretyship. Finally, the borh system 
was in all probability not maintained throughout the kingdom, 
just as frankpledge certainly was not; and the regions without 
frankpledge seem also to have been without borh. 4 These two 
institutions, therefore, possess such strong points of identity in 
purpose, method, and territory occupied that their maintenance 
at one and the same time would have been not only an absurdity 
but an impossibility. Had frankpledge existed in England 
prior to 1030, the Saxon borh system, devised and maintained 
with infinite pains, would have been a superfluity. 5 The Anglo- 

1 See 3 Edgar, vii. i ; and 2 Canute, xxv, xxva, xxv. 2 : Liebermann, Gesetze, 
i. 204-205, 328-329. 

2 See below, pp. 115-116. 

3 The Anglo-Saxon legal principle that the lord was ultimately responsible 
for the dependent provided for those of unfree status. Hence, remembering 
that the leges of the twelfth century still regarded the villains as free, one may 
say that borh included all freemen, whether pledged by the lord or by neigh- 
bors or relatives, and that frankpledge included all freemen not pledged by 
the lord. Compare 3 Edgar, vi ; 1 Ethelred, i ; 2 Canute, xx a (Liebermann, i. 
202-203, 216-217, 322-323), with Leges Henrici, viii. 2, and Leges Edw. Con/., 
xx (ibid. 554, 645). 

4 See below, pp. 52-53, 56-58. 

5 This argument of Marquardsen (Haft, 25, 45) shows how illogical is the 
old practice of reading friborg where borg occurs in the Saxon laws. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 27 

Norman scheme of peace suretyship was clearly the offspring 
and successor of the Anglo-Saxon institution. 

The contrasts between borh and frankpledge are those between 
a less highly and a more highly developed system. The borh 
obligation of the laws of Ethelred and Canute was not per- 
manent, as was that of frankpledge suretyship. It was volun- 
tary, its assumption for a person of bad reputation was optional, 1 
and apparently it might be withdrawn so long as no legal im- 
position thereby incurred remained undischarged. The pledges 
of a convicted person were, indeed, permitted to withdraw; 
for the law required such a person to give new ones, 2 a point in 
marked contrast to the compulsory obligation of those in frank- 
pledge. According to the Anglo-Saxon laws, furthermore, 
every man had his individual borh independent of that of other 
men. He need not — when his surety was his lord, he could 
not — render compensatory service as borh for those who 
pledged him. Under the frankpledge system, on the other 
hand, the pledges all belonged to a fixed group and served as 
reciprocal sureties. 3 Finally, the frankpledge group was not, 
like the Anglo-Saxon borh group, merely an association to 
effect suretyship; it was also a tithing, a body of ten members 
performing police duties under the direction of a head man. 
To sum up the case, all that the collective borh of Canute's 
reign required in order to become frankpledge was that its 
suretyship obligation be assumed by the tithing or a similar 
group, and that it be made compulsory upon the group. 

The fusion of borh and tithing, which were regarded as legally 
distinct about the year 1030, 4 was easily accomplished in actual 

1 As Ramsay (Foundations of England, i. 378) well shows. 

2 See above, p. 22. 

3 This is emphasized by Waitz (Verfassungsgeschichte, i. 446-447) and by 
Liebermann (Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf., 81). 

4 It was Liebermann who pointed out (ibid.) that this was the process by 
which frankpledge originated. 



28 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

practice, no doubt in many cases by this very date. This is 
probably the reason why in the old law the two systems appear 
in such juxtaposition as to have given rise to the erroneous 
notion of their identity. 1 According to the same legislation, 
all persons are through the hundred court to be brought into 
tithings and all are to be in suretyship. The members of the 
tithing to which all the freemen of a given neighborhood be- 
long are the same persons who must unite to form borh associa- 
tions for each other in the ever-increasing number of instances 
in which neither the lord nor the relatives act as sureties. Old 
Anglo-Saxon legal tradition indicates that the two forms of or- 
ganization included very nearly the same number of persons, — 
the tithing ten, the maegthborh twelve, — figures that may be 
taken to stand approximately for the number of men in a small 
village. Both groups, consisting to a greater or a less degree of 
the same persons, joined in the pursuit of criminals, the tithing 
to fulfil its regular duties, the borh to capture the criminal 
whom they had pledged and thus to escape a heavy payment ; 2 
and both were held to their duties through enrolment in the 
same hundred court. Under the influence of this contact year 
by year, the voluntary and occasional borh group became as- 
similated with the compulsory and regular tithing group. At 
the first mention of frankpledge, eighty-five years after the laws 
of Canute were enacted, the suretyship unit consisted not of 

1 "And we will that every freeman, be he householder, be he follower, be 
brought into a hundred and into tithing, who desires his lad and wer and free 
law in case any one should slay him after he have reached the age of xii years. 
And let every one be brought into a hundred and in borh and let the borh hold 
and lead him to every plea." — 2 Canute, xx, xxa, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 
322-323. 

2 Two hundred shillings, the wergeld of the ordinary freeman, was a heavy 
financial burden. In the reign of Athelstan a good horse was valued at a half- 
pound, an ox at a mancus, a cow at twenty pence, a swine at ten pence, and a 
sheep at a shilling. See Judicia Civitatis Lundoniae, vi. 1-2, ibid. 176. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 2g 

twelve men, the borh number, but of ten, the tithing number. 
So complete was the amalgamation, at least in matters touching 
suretyship, that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the only 
surviving monument to the former separation of the two insti- 
tutions was apparently the formularistic legal expression "in 
tithing and in friborg," 1 though it is possible that the trouble- 
some name donzaine or dozen, which is applied to the tithing 
in the law French of the thirteenth century, 2 may be a relic of 
the same Anglo-Saxon condition. The clearest indication of 
the amalgamation itself is to be found in the extreme southeast 
of England, where by the twelfth century the local division of 
the hundred was often called, not a township or a tithing, but a 
borg. 3 

The final step in the evolution of frankpledge, the legal 
identification of the collective suretyship obligation with the 
tithing, is a development which, though promoted by the actual 
practice just described, was nevertheless perfected by further 
means. At this point ends the Anglo-Saxon growth of the sys- 
tem under discussion. The tithing and the borh are old English 
institutions; the rise of neighborhood collective suretyship 
through the decline of seigniorial and kinship pledging, and 
even the blending of the tithing and collective suretyship in 
practical operation, both belong to the period before 1066. 
Between the voluntary pledging of a man by his neighbors in 
1030, however, and the duty, in 11 15, of every man in a tithing 
to serve as a surety for every other man in the tithing without 
right of refusal or withdrawal, no matter what the character of 

1 "Sine plegio et tedingam" (1180), Madox, Firma Burgi, 64, note e; "in 
no tithing nor in frankpledge" (12 Hen. Ill), Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, 
iv. 72; " habeant inter se tethingam et frithborg," Cart. St. Peter of Gloucester 
(Rolls Series), ii. 36; "in franco plegio et decenna," Bracton, fol. 124&, ii. 304. 

2 See below, p. 87. 

3 See below, p. 86. 



3 o THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

the associates, is a break that can be explained only by govern- 
mental action of a deliberate and rigorous nature prompted by 
the imminent danger to which the public peace was exposed 
from the ordinary freemen of the realm. 1 In vain does one look 
for this causal condition during the reigns of the sons of Canute 
or in that of Edward the Confessor. Theirs was a quiet period 
for the realm in general; for, as Liebermann points out, 2 the 
hatred against Edward's Norman favorites led to the hostile 
intrigues of great nobles at court rather than to violence from 
the people in the country districts. The dispersion throughout 
England of a considerable number of foreign conquerors, 
whether after the conquest by the Danish Canute or after that 
by the Norman William, explains the situation exactly. But 
Canute made no decided change in the English borh system; 
he even sent home his foreign troops, 3 protecting his followers 
while in England only by re-enacting the law of Ethelred under 
which the king was declared maegth and mundbora of strangers, 
with the duty of avenging their injuries. 4 William the Con- 
queror, however, in a drastic regulation for the avowed protec- 
tion of his followers from assassination, — a mandate by which 
he held the whole hundred accountable, 5 — laid bare a condition 

1 VinogradofT {Growth of the Manor, 250, note 36) merely says that frank- 
pledge "sprang up naturally when the system of maegborh had spent itself." 
Maitland (Domesday Book and Beyond, 284) suggests nothing more than that 
the influence of the lord in the growth of collective suretyship accounts for 
frankpledge. Liebermann (Ueber die Leges Edw. Con/., 81) attributes its 
origin to a blending of borh and tithing before the twelfth century, preferably be- 
tween 1030 and 1086. No one has ever given a more logical statement of the 
final influence in the organization of frankpledge than Waitz (Verfassungs- 
geschichte, i. 453), who declares for "the strong police power, probably that 
of William I." 

2 Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf, 113. 

3 Stubbs, Select Charters, 75. 

4 8 Ethelred, xxxiii; 2 Canute, xl: Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 267, 340-341. 
Palgrave (Commonwealth, i. 196) attributes the origin of frankpledge to Canute. 

6 See Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf., 112-113. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 31 

and a motive to warrant a more stringent borh system. The 
need of strong measures to secure the observance of peace by 
the peasants, the marked change that came over the suretyship 
system betokening a strong organizing hand which was not at 
the helm before 1066, the similarity of the new mutual and 
compulsory responsibility of the tithing to that of the hundred 
known to have been introduced by William, the fact that com- 
paratively early in the reign of his son Henry I the frankpledge 
tithing appears to have been a well-established institution cus- 
tomary even in past time, 1 as well as the facts that about 
thirty years after his death the process of putting men in frank- 
pledge tithings was uniform and well known, 2 and that by 1125 
a native writer was completely in ignorance as to the origin of 
the system, 3 all point to the reign of William the Conqueror, 
from 1066 to 1087, as the period of legal organization. 

The Normans in England did not, then, create an out-and- 
out new system of suretyship; as Bishop Stubbs clearly shows, 
they merely adapted an old English system to the needs of their 
own time. 4 Frankpledge was probably unknown in Normandy 
and unfamiliar to the experience of the new kings. Its name 
seems to be nothing but a Norman version of the word used in 
the everyday speech of the English people ; and for its character- 
istic official, the tithingman, a name familiar in English law a 
century before the Norman Conquest, no French word is used 

1 Note the word debebant in Leges Edw. Con/., xx. 1 (Liebermann, Gesetze, 
i. 645). See also below, p. 60, note 1. 

2 Leges Henrici, viii. 2, ibid. 554 (1114-1118). 

3 See above, p. 6. 

4 "The institution of the collective Frankpledge, which recent writers in- 
cline to treat as a Norman innovation, is so distinctly coloured by English cus- 
tom that it has been generally regarded as purely indigenous. If it were indeed 
a precaution taken by the new rulers against the avoidance of justice by the 
absconding or harbouring of criminals, it fell with ease into the usages and 
even the legal terms which had been common for other similar purposes since 
the reign of Athelstan." — Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 299. 



32 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

by the earlier writers. 1 Moreover, William's legal position was 
that of an English king. As such he accepted the constitution 
of Edward the Confessor and the laws of the English people, 
except in the few instances in which he specifically modified 
them. One of the few leges which are generally regarded as 
embodying genuine legislation of his directs that the hundred 
be held as in the time of Edward the Confessor, and repeats 
the old law that every freeman must have surety to lead him to 
justice, 2 the only noteworthy innovation being a provision which 
shows that pledges are usually required to clear themselves 
from collusion in the escape of a criminal. Last of all, the 
absence of frankpledge from those parts of England where it 
is least probable that the Anglo-Saxon borh laws were enforced 
— Yorkshire in particular 3 — shows that the Norman frank- 
pledge was merely an adaptation of the older system, not a 
creation for the Conqueror's new domain. 

The arguments against the initiation of the real frankpledge 
system through Norman reorganization furthered by processes 
already far advanced before they had formal legal recognition, 
are not convincing. Since the advocates of an Anglo-Saxon 
origin have gone no farther than to demonstrate an undeniable 
development from old English institutions, and to discredit the 
idea of a Norman creation, the balance of probability still 
inclines strongly away from the view that frankpledge as already 

1 The ordinary French term chef plege, or capital pledge, a word having to 
do solely with the Norman suretyship system, was, however, probably in legal 
use before 1135, as is indicated by the words "in omni friborge unus erat 
capitalis, quern ipsi [i. e. Angli] vocabant friborges heved " (Leges Edw. Con/., 
xx. 3, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 646). 

2 Willelmi I Articuli X, viii, viiia (also French Articuli, viii, viiia), ibid. 
488-489. See also Stubbs, Select Charters, 84. In the form handed down to 
modern times the law shows a relaxed rather than an increased severity in ex- 
cusing the pledges from paying the wergeld of the fugitive if they can clear 
themselves of complicity in his crime. 

3 See below, pp. 49-55. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 33 

described came into being before 1066 unaided by the legal 
genius apparent in the strongly centralized Norman govern- 
mental system. The scholarship of Liebermann designates the 
end of the Conqueror's reign as the earliest point to which the 
complete blending of borh and tithing may with probability be 
assigned. 1 His suggestion that the silence of Domesday is very 
striking if frankpledge was founded within the preceding twenty 
years has little force as argument ; for Domesday, being a finan- 
cial survey, is not necessarily concerned with the kind of surety- 
ship required. This very silence, indeed, and the persistence of 
the English name friborg, also advanced by Liebermann as evi- 
dence of Anglo-Saxon origin, 2 accord well with William's policy 
of nominally retaining old English institutions while actually 
modifying them — in spirit, at least — as occasions and condi- 
tions demanded. It was in the Norman interest to encourage the 
idea that the compulsory, mutual pledging of the tithing was the 
same as that system of free pledging under which the members 
of the local tithing had undertaken to act as sureties for each 
other ; and the populace was not likely to change the old name 
merely because common practice had become legal requirement. 
Of greater significance, though by no means conclusive as 
proof, is the fact that writers of the twelfth century who first 
mention frankpledge believed it to be an Anglo-Saxon institu- 
tion. This line of argument, first advanced by Schmid chiefly 
to show that frankpledge could not have originated in the reign 
of William II or of Henry I, during the lifetime of these writers, 3 
loses much of its force when applied to the earlier reign of 
William I. Liebermann attaches importance to the fact that 
the idea of an Anglo-Saxon origin was held in common by Wil- 

1 Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf., 81. 

2 Ibid., note 1. 

3 Schmid, Gesetze, 647, with reference to the Gesta Regum (Rolls Series), i. 
129-130. 

3 



34 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

Ham of Malmesbury and the writer of the Leges Edwardi Con- 
fessoris; 1 and one may note that the same idea was entertained 
by the compiler of the Leges Henrici, as is shown by his inter- 
preting frankpledge into the laws of Canute. 2 These ancient 
writers, however, make grave errors concerning the system 
which considerably impair their value as authorities. So far as 
they express any idea, they believe that the institution was sud- 
denly created ; 3 and they all hold the erroneous notion that it 
existed in every part of England. 4 Furthermore, that they are 
not reliable witnesses concerning important institutional changes 
in the reign of William the Conqueror is shown by the fact that, 
according to the compiler of the Leges Edwardi, the fine undoubt- 
edly first laid upon the hundred by William for failure to pro- 
duce the murderer of a person whose English descent could not 
be proved 5 was instituted by Canute, 6 according to William of 
Malmesbury by Alfred. 7 The truth is that neither of these 
writers had knowledge of the Conqueror's reign at first hand. 8 
The legend of Alfred's legal innovations, and the mention of a 

1 Ueber die Leges Edw. Con/., 78; 81, note 1. 

2 See above, p. 15. 

3 See above, p. 6. 

4 Liebermann himself points out these facts in his Ueber die Leges Edw. 
Conf, 79. 

5 Ibid. 1 1 2-1 13. There are still extant versions, older than 1135, of what 
purports to be William's decree introducing the murder fine. See Lets Willelme, 
xxii, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 510-511; and Willelmi I Articuli X, iii. 1-2, 
ibid. 487. 

6 Leges Edw. Conf., xvi, ibid. 642; Thorpe, Laws, i. 449; Schmid, Gesetze, 
500. 

7 Gesta Regum (Rolls Series), i. 129-130. 

8 William was not born before 1095 {ibid., Introd., p. xiv). The compiler 
of the Leges Edwardi, which, according to Liebermann, were probably written 
between 1135 and 11 50, could hardly have been born much earlier; but if n 15, 
the earliest possible date for them, be accepted, it is still to be remembered 
that the writer was a foreigner (Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf., 
17-18), who could not have been conversant with English affairs until about 
1095. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 35 

tithing — supposedly a frankpledge tithing — in old English 
laws, sufficiently account for their notion that frankpledge was 
maintained before the Norman Conquest. Their ignorance in 
regard to an important system clearly organized by William I 
shows that their failure to understand and explain a Norman 
adaptation of an old English institution is of slight importance 
as argument. More than this, there is a perfectly clear reason 
why foreign-born writers should, at least in the reign of Henry I, 
have been influenced, as the compiler of the Leges Henrici 
certainly was influenced, 1 by an inclination to further the 
king's desire for popularity with his English subjects by repre- 
senting his administrative practices as resting, not on innova- 
tions of Norman oppression, but on the good old laws of Edward 
the Confessor. 2 

The reorganization of the English both system at the hands of 
the Norman government, effected somewhere between 1066 and 
about 1 100, was prompted by the rebellious and murderous atti- 
tude of the vanquished Anglo-Saxons toward their conquerors. 
In old English law the man of bad reputation was expected to 
be under collective suretyship because no lord was willing to 
risk responsibility for him. In the Norman period it was the 
local uprisings following the Conquest, together with a state of 
the peace under which the king found it necessary to take dras- 
tic steps to protect Normans from secret assassination, that led 
the new foreign lords to refuse the responsibility of pledging 
English dependents outside of their own households. Except in 
case of the comparatively small class of household retainers, the 
option of finding one sufficient person to stand as borh, allowed 
in the time of Canute and apparently till 1066, now disappears. 

1 He was a lawyer associated with the curia regis. See Davis, in Eng. Hist. 
Review, xvii. 148. 

2 Liebermann (Ueber die Leges, etc., 78, 112) suggests this influence. 



36 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

The borh law, commonly regarded as one of the real enact- 
ments of William the Conqueror and dating in a written form 
from the reign of Henry I, makes a marked legal innovation in 
assuming that every man, not merely the tyhtbysig one, will have 
a number of pledges. 1 The whole English people, classed like 
its own malefactors of an earlier time, was thus required to be 
in collective suretyship. "All villains," says the oldest version 
of the so-called laws of William 2 (that is to say, all the ordinary 
men of the vills),, 3 " shall be in frankpledge." 

The withdrawal of the right to find one's own pledges and 
thus to have an individual suretyship group was a necessary 
part of the repressive movement by which William the Con- 
queror brought out of lawlessness a famous observance of the 
public peace. 4 This achievement was effected largely through 
the introduction of a principle new to English law, — that of 
communal responsibility in criminal matters, a principle applied 
to the township and the tithing as well as to the hundred. In 
its earliest form it seems to appear in the heavy fine laid upon 
a hundred which failed to produce the murderer of one of 
William's followers. After this to put the lesser divisions of the 
hundred under the same sort of bond was an easy step, which 
brought nearer home to each locality its obligation to preserve 
the peace. It is a significant fact that the responsibility of four 
neighboring vills in criminal affairs, a circumstance very famil- 

1 "Si quisquam talium evaserit, videant plegii ut simpliciter solvant quod 
calumniatum est, et purgent se." — Willelmi I Articuli X, viiia, in Lieber- 
mann, Gesetze, i. 488. 

2 The French translation (Lets Willelme, xx. 3a, ibid. 506), dating from the 
reign of Henry I. 

3 See Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 37, 43, 51-52. 

4 "Among other things is not to be forgotten the good peace that he made 
in this land; so that a man who had any confidence in himself might go over 
his realm, with his bosom full of gold, unhurt. Nor durst any man slay 
another man had he done ever so great evil to the other." — Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle (Rolls Series), ii. 189. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 37 

iar to Englishmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is not 
found in English law before the Conquest. In the thirteenth 
century there are numerous recorded instances in which vills 
and even boroughs were accounted hundreds in the exaction of 
the murdrum; 1 and even in the leges of the twelfth century such 
an obligation of a small community has considerable sanction. 2 
It was inevitable that suretyship regulations should fall into this 
scheme of local responsibility. Now that the government had 
to guard carefully against the complicity of sureties in the crime 
and flight of their pledges, 3 the best way, both to prevent their 
running away together and to collect fines in case of flight, was 
to make every man in the community responsible for every other 
man. To accomplish this result, the simple device, employed by 
Norman officials, of collecting the fine from the community at 
large when it failed to produce an absconding miscreant was, 
as Gneist shows, sufficient ; but to make this practice, as Gneist 
does, the one explanation of the origin of frankpledge is to ignore 
a century and a half of Anglo-Saxon legal history. 4 The former 

1 As in Madox, Firma Burgi, 85, note x; Madox, Exchequer, 544. 

3 Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edw. Con/., 109. According to Leges Henrici, 
xci. 2-3, the manerium pays; one translation of Lets Willelme, xxii, says the 
homines de visineto. See Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 511, 607. 

3 See Willelmi I Articuli X, viii, viiia, ibid. 488. 

4 "The Norman official," says Gneist (English Constitution, 152), "who had 
nothing in common with the communities, summarily demanded the fine from 
the people tributim (in gross), and left them to settle the matter among them- 
selves. The result was that in this manner the system of police sureties devel- 
oped into a mutual responsibility of the tithing." His idea that the change was 
from one or two pledges only to the pledging of the whole community does not 
accord with facts already brought out in connection with maegthborh. It must 
be borne in mind, too, that the responsibility of the vill or the tithing was not 
merely that of the hundred applied to a smaller district; for the hundred was 
held accountable only when it failed to produce the slayer of a person whose 
English ancestry could not be proved, the frankpledge tithing whenever one of 
its members escaped after committing any felony. Thus the old Anglo-Saxon 
suretyship duties were retained. Both Stubbs (Constitutional History, i. 95) 
and Liebermann (Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf., 113) believe that the responsi- 



38 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

rough correspondence of the borh association with the tithing, 
and the obvious advantage of the latter system from a police as 
well as from a financial point of view, were further influences to 
make compulsory upon the tithing of the West Saxon shires the 
duties of suretyship. Elsewhere the vill is to be found in the 
twelfth century serving as the basis of a frankpledge tithing. 1 
The old idea that the fiscal division of Northumbria called the 
tenmantale became a frankpledge tithing is erroneous. 2 In the 
midlands, however, a manor sometimes answered this purpose; 3 
and in East Anglia the local division known as the leet also 
became a unit for frankpledge suretyship. 4 

Along with this tendency to make suretyship follow territorial 
lines is also to be traced that tradition of the tithing which called 
for ten men in a group. When the records first give details in 
the twelfth century, they show that there might be more than 
one frankpledge tithing in the same vill or territorial tithing, 5 

bility of the tithing was modelled on that of the hundred. The priority of the 
fine on the hundred may possibly be shown by the fact that the so-called laws 
of William represent the murder fine as already in existence (at least in an in- 
choate state), but speak of borh only in the language of the old Saxon law (see 
Stubbs, Select Charters, 84). It is not impossible, however, that the connection 
of tithing with borh suggested the idea of laying the murder fine on the 
hundred. 

1 "De villata de Wolselee 1/2 m. quia non habuit quem plegiavit" (Salt 
Archaeol. Soc, Collections, iii. 63). The "villata de Morton" (Warwick) 
paid half a mark "pro libero plegio suo" {Pipe Roll, 15 Hen. II, 29). In the 
shires of Wessex there were frankpledge tithings which bore the names of terri- 
torial tithings. See Pipe Rolls, 12 Hen. II, 92 (Sussex); 21 Hen. II, 162 
(Gloucester); 22 Hen. II, 133 (Berkshire). 

2 See below, pp. 52-53. 

3 Fridbor of the lands of Robert (Derby), Pipe Roll, 21 Hen. II, 34; frank- 
pledge of the land of Margaret in Aslackby (Lincoln), Hunter, Pipe Roll, 1 Ric. 
7, 66. Ralph the Rustic, a fugitive, dwelt at Rushden (Hertford) in the franc 
plege of the Hospitallers, and the land of the Hospitallers in Rushden was at 
mercy for his flight {Rot. Cur. Regis, ed. Palgrave, i. 159, 10 Ric. I). The land 
of Alan de Boxle in the vill of Hoddesdon paid half a mark for a flight (ibid. 168). 

4 See Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. liv. 

c The phrase "decenne totius villate de Hyate" (Maitland, Pleas of the 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 39 

and thus that, where the population was so large as to form an 
unwieldy police group, the personal nature of the registration 
permitted the creation in the hundred court of as many such 
groups as were deemed convenient. By n 15 there undoubtedly 
was a basis in actual practice for the assertion that in the vills 
of the realm men were grouped by tens for purposes of mutual 
suretyship. 1 

The centralization of administration, which alone could de- 
velop and maintain a uniform system of frankpledge, forbids 
the conclusion that either seigniorial influence or the local finan- 
cial exactions of Norman officials imparted to the institution its 
final form. No less than Anglo-Saxon borh, its forerunner, does 
it bear "the imprint of public law." 2 In legal theory and tra- 
dition is to be traced the unquestioning assumption of royal 
direction and supervision. The so-called laws of William, 
reduced to writing within a generation of his death, ascribe to 
him the re-enacting of a law of collective borh. The Leges 
Henrici, which early in his son's reign represent frankpledge 
as common to the realm and the legal arrangements for putting 
men in tithing as uniform, reserve to the king alone cognizance 
of a breach of borh. 3 The thirteenth-century practice of making 
the enrolment of peasants in frankpledge the occasion for their 
taking the oath of allegiance to the king, 4 seems to date from 

Crown for Gloucester, No. 124) even suggests that in Gloucestershire in 1221 it 
may have been somewhat unusual for a frankpledge tithing*to include the men 
of a whole vill. 

1 See above, p. 1. This statement undoubtedly holds true much more gen- 
erally in old Mercia and East Anglia, where the vill proper is the local unit. In 
the West Saxon shires, where the territorial tithing is the unit, court rolls from 
first to last show a tendency to make frankpledge follow the territorial unit. 

2 Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 180. 

3 Leges Henrici, x. 1, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 556. Cf. "regis mul- 
tam," in William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (Rolls Series), i. 130. 

4 See below, p. 130. 



4 o THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

Norman days; and the rule of law laid down by Bracton, that 
the lord cannot remit the view of frankpledge of his men because 
this right pertains to the king alone, 1 is but the formulation, a 
century and a half later, of a principle clearly implied in the law 
of Henry I. 2 By its uniformity, no less than by its rigorous, 
methodical, exacting nature, frankpledge shows the handiwork 
of an early Norman king. 

The introduction of the legal principles and institutions upon 
which rested the completed frankpledge system belongs to the 
early Plantagenet period, just as the definite evolution of frank- 
pledge suretyship belongs to the early Norman period. To the 
Assize of Clarendon, promulgated a century after the Norman 
Conquest, are to be ascribed the beginnings of the new order. 
In this decree King Henry II not only requires that no one 
receive men into a city or a borough unless they be either in 
mainpast or in frankpledge, 3 but also enunciates the principle 
that the supreme right to hold view of frankpledge, even where 
this is done in a seigniorial court, belongs to the crown, to 
whose agent, the sheriff, no one either within castle or without, 
or even in the honor of Wallingford, shall deny access to his 
court, to the end that before the sheriff all may be put under 
frankpledge. 4 A far greater and more important innovation 
resulted from an earlier provision of the same decree which 
gave to the king's justices in eyre the cognizance of present- 
ments made in the hundred. 5 The effect of this measure was to 
shift from the sheriff of the county to the itinerant justices of 

1 Bracton, fol. 37, i. 290. 

2 "Speciali tamen plenitudine, si opus est, bis in anno conveniant in hun- 
dretum suum quicunque liberi, tarn heorthfest quam folgarii, ad dinoscendum 
scilicet inter cetera, si decaniae plenae sint, vel qui quomodo qua ratione reces- 
serint vel super accreverint." — Leges Henrici, viii. 1, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554. 

3 Assize of Clarendon, ch. x, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 

4 Ch. ix. 
8 Ch. i. 



ORIGIN OF FRANKPLEDGE 41 

the king's central court the function of holding the men of the 
tithing to the duties for which they were enrolled. The pipe 
roll of the same year shows the immediate beginning of this 
control through amercement by the justices, in various counties, 
of tithings that failed to produce absconding members before 
them. 1 It was likewise made incumbent upon the justices to 
amerce a vill for failure to report for enrolment at the sheriff's 
tourn the names of residents who were out of tithing. 2 Through 
the eyre the system of frankpledge, which had long been a 
regalian affair in theory, was thus enforced in franchises no 
less than in geldable districts, and an instrument of vast impor- 
tance to the public peace, that had been preserved through local 
agency, came to be wielded by the king through his personal 
representatives. 

1 Pipe Roll, 12 Hen. II, 9-10, 14, 15, 31, 66, 70, 87, 92. 

2 Thus, for example, in Pipe Roll, 23 Hen. II, 200, is the entry, "1/2 m. de 
villa de Herrefelde quia Ricardus fuit sine plegio." 



CHAPTER II 
DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 

Frankpledge presents features remarkable in more ways than 
one. A system Which, to insure the appearance of peasants at 
trial, organized them into permanent groups, and laid upon the 
members of these tithings responsibility for each other's custody, 
is one that by its very nature claims attention. Considered, 
moreover, as an evidence of strong kingship in that it enlisted 
the ordinary man in the interest of the general peace, it stands 
unique in a feudal age. Fully as striking as any other feature, 
however, is the fact that such a system under such kings was not 
in force in all parts of the realm. 

Frankpledge must, indeed, be characterized as an institution 
which, though indigenous to English soil, spread neither to dis- 
tricts beyond its original limits in England nor to any non- 
English region subject to the English king. That it was not 
prevalent in Normandy seems to be as clear as the fact that it 
was not of Norman origin. 1 The quo warranto pleas in the 
thirteenth century make no reference to a view of frankpledge 
in the islands of Guernsey and Jersey; nor does an assize roll 
for the Channel Islands in the reign of Edward III, though the 
latter does mention both the outlawry of fugitives and a part of 
the leet jurisdiction. 2 There is strong indication that the Anglo- 

1 According to Stubbs {Constitutional History, i. 96), there is no trace of a 
similar institution on the Continent prior to the time when it is to be found in 
full working order in England. 

2 Public Record Office, Assize Roll, No. 1166, 5 Edw. III. 

42 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 43 

Normans did not carry the system to Ireland ; for in the reign 
of Edward I mainprise or bail appears to have been the only 
form of suretyship there used for a person accused of crime, 
even though he were a fugitive. 1 In the laws of the Scottish 
boroughs also, and in the acts of the Scottish Parliament, borh 
means only warranty or bail. 2 Nor does there seem to have been 
any frankpledge in Wales; for, as Maitland has shown, the 
Statutitm Walliae, in establishing a sheriff's tourn for the newly 
conquered region, made no provision for the presentments by 
the heads of tithings which were a distinguishing trait of the 
English tourn. 3 In Wales these presentments were made in- 
stead by all the men of the local court or commote. 4 It is 
evident, therefore, that the view of frankpledge claimed in 
Caernarvonshire in 1370 is but the name of a certain jurisdic- 
tion, 5 as was the case in England at the same period after the 
real age of frankpledge was gone. 

So uniform has been the operation of the English legal system, 
even from Norman days, that writers on the English constitu- 
tion have usually been slow to admit that frankpledge is an 
important exception to the rule. Indeed, the idea that it was 
an institution common to the realm of England is presented by 
legal writers who were perfectly familiar with its workings all 
about them. The Assize of Clarendon and the Magna Carta of 

1 Calendar of Justiciary Rolls of Ireland, 1295-1303 (ed. Mills), 76-77, 166. 
Coroners' rolls for Ireland fail to call attention to criminals in frankpledge 
(ibid. 175); but in England at this time it was one of the duties of the coroner 
to keep a record as to what tithing was responsible for a fugitive felon (see 
Britton, ed. Nichols, i. 13). In Ireland, as in Wales, the sheriff's tourn has no 
necessary connection with frankpledge (Calendar of Justiciary Rolls, 51-52). 

2 See Innes, Ancient Laws of the Burghs of Scotland, 57-160. 

3 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxxiii. 

4 Statutes of the Realm, i. 57. 

5 Record of Caernarvon (Record Com.), 183. Lewis (Ancient Laws of Wales, 
296) makes a curiously inexact statement when he says that view of frankpledge 
is not to be found in this record. 



44 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

1 217, in making provision for the maintenance of the system, 
give no hint that this legislation is not for the whole kingdom. 1 
The legal compiler who wrote in the earlier half of the reign of 
Henry I conveys the impression that frankpledge was every- 
where in force ; 2 and the idea of William of Malmesbury, who 
wrote about n 20, is that every Englishman must be in tithing. 3 
The person who at some time between 11 15 and 1135 collected 
the so-called Leges Edwardi Confessoris explicitly declares that 
the suretyship of the tithings is for all the vills of the king- 
dom ; 4 and the same idea is to be gained from a reading of 
Bracton 5 and the law writers of the reign of Edward I. 6 Like 
some other legal theories, however, this assumption is not liter- 
ally true, and, so far as any evidence goes to show, never was 
true, even within the somewhat narrow bounds of Norman 
England. 

That frankpledge suretyship was not required in all parts of 
England is no new discovery. Three-quarters of a century ago 
Palgrave found evidence to show that there was none in Shrop- 
shire or in Westmoreland, and that the character of records in 
other northern counties was such as to indicate the absence 
of the frankpledge tithing. 7 Palgrave did not, however, at- 
tempt to determine definitely the limits of the frankpledge region ; 
moreover, by attaching an undue importance to certain evidence 
pointing to the non-existence of frankpledge in some localities, 
he was inclined to underrate the prevalence of the system where 

1 Stubbs, Select Charters, 144, 347; Statutes of the Realm, i. 19. 

2 " Communis quippe commodi provida dispensacione statutum est." — 
Leges Henrici, viii. 2, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554. 

3 Gesta Regum (Rolls Series), i. 129-130. 

4 "Et hoc est, quod de omnibus villis totius regni sub decennali fldeiussione 
debebant omnes esse." — Leges, xx. I, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 645. 

5 Fol. 124&, ii. 306. 

B Britton, i. 48; Fleta (1685), 40; Mirror of Justices (Selden Soc), 39. 
7 Palgrave, Commonwealth, ii. p. cxxiii, note 32. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 45 

it did exist. What remains to be done, then, is to answer as fully 
as possible two questions : (1) In what counties was there not, 
and in what counties was there, frankpledge? (2) To what 
extent did the institution prevail in the frankpledge counties? 
It will be the aim of this chapter to show that in the period imme- 
diately following the Norman Conquest the system In general 
was not in force in the counties touching the western and north- 
ern borders; that it did exist in all of the counties to the south 
of Yorkshire and to the east of Cheshire, Shropshire, and Here- 
fordshire ; and that within the frankpledge region it was a rule 
to which there were few exceptions. 

To prove absolutely that frankpledge was at no time main- 
tained in parts of what had been the border counties of the 
Conqueror's time is impossible. For some of these counties 
there is no direct evidence, and for some of the Welsh border 
counties the evidence is not all on the same side of the question. 
Yet a silence of the records which elsewhere systematically 
give details as to the obligations of the tithing, a failure to es- 
tablish the usual arrangements for keeping up the system, a 
tendency of medieval law to follow old custom, and, in some 
instances, the direct testimony of jurors on oath, all taken to- 
gether go to show with every degree of probability that there 
was no frankpledge whatever in the old border counties of the 
north, and, as a rule, none in those of the west. 

The lack of evidence, in general a dangerous support for an 
argument concerning medieval conditions, is in this instance of 
such a nature as to demand attention. Although royal charters 
sometimes mention view of frankpledge, documents of this class 
seem to make not the slightest allusion to such an institution in 
the Norman border counties, except in a few cases in the west; 
and the same may be said of the inquisitions post mortem. 
The hundred and the quo warranto rolls, which, through their 



46 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

record of private privileges called in question by Edward I, 
mention a great many views of frankpledge and frankpledge 
tithings in thirty counties, do not refer to anything of the 
kind in the old border shires except in Hereford and Shrop- 
shire near Wales, — a silence which of itself inclined Maitland 
to the view that there was no frankpledge in the northern 
counties, 1 and which is certainly very significant from the 
fact that in these records this particular right is mentioned 
oftenest of all in connection with other counties, and that 
even in doubtful ones are to be found companion franchises to 
the view of frankpledge along with parts of the ordinary leet 
jurisdiction. 2 

Of still greater significance is the failure of records to men- 
tion frankpledge in these districts when such an omission would 
certainly mean a financial loss to the king were the institution 
in force within the county. Thus the pipe rolls, which consist- 
ently record amercements laid upon the tithings elsewhere for 
non-performance of duty, contain not the slightest allusion to 
such a practice in nine western and northern counties. Ordi- 
narily at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the 
fourteenth century the list of amercements appended to an 
assize roll was the most complete record in existence of the 
derelictions of frankpledge tithings; yet lists for these doubtful 
counties preserved in the Public Record Office contain no 
mention whatever of the amercement of a tithing. Since, then, 
frankpledge obligation was not here, as elsewhere, one of the 
sources of royal revenue at the eyre, it is necessary to assume 
either that the system was not in existence in these counties, or, 
what is practically impossible, that the royal officials here over- 

1 Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxx, note i. 

2 The enforcement of the assize of bread and beer is mentioned in Cumber- 
land. See Plac. de Quo War., 129, 371, 375, 379; also Northumberland Assize 
Rolls (Surtees Soc.), 357-358. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 47 

looked a considerable source of revenue which everywhere else 
they fully exploited. 

But not alone in entries touching financial matters is there 
a failure to mention frankpledge in the records of the royal 
courts for the extreme north and west. Although the assize 
rolls, which were kept for every county in England in the period 
from the reign of Henry III to that of Edward III, show the 
regular enforcement of frankpledge suretyship in the great 
body of counties, they have nothing to say about tithing or 
frankpledge suretyship in the nine doubtful ones. In the light 
of conditions which these rolls often reveal, this is a fact of far 
greater import than at first sight appears. In 1256, and again 
in 1279, the itinerant justices held criminal pleas for Northum- 
berland, the records of which show a deplorable state of the 
public peace in that county. Practically all malefactors fled 
across the Scottish border, or to Durham, or to lesser liberties 
within the county, and thus escaped with the mild penalty of 
being proclaimed outlaws. Here, if anywhere, frankpledge was 
needed, and here, if anywhere, one would expect to find it in 
full operation ; yet in an account fairly bristling with flights of 
fugitives, abjurations of the realm, confiscations of criminals' 
chattels, and other penalties in great detail, to which is appended 
a list of amercements before the justices, there is not a word to 
suggest that a tithing was held responsible for not producing 
one of its members. 1 In the other doubtful counties the silence 
of the records is just as convincing. Palgrave, after examining 
assize rolls for the northern counties, doubted from their tenor 
whether any entry relating to collective frankpledge could be 
found in this class of material, which elsewhere affords the best 
account of frankpledge activity ; 2 and since he wrote no dis- 

1 Northumberland Assize Rolls, pp. xviii, xix, 70 ff., 374 ff. 

2 Palgrave, Commonwealth, ii. p. cxxiii, note 32. 



48 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

covery has tended to weaken the powerful conviction created 
by the silence of these records. Not only in Northumberland, 
but in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire, and York- 
shire, the assize rolls, through their failure to mention either the 
ordinary obligation of the tithing or its amercement for default 
in that obligation, show that it was not the practice for itinerant 
justices to enforce frankpledge in these as in other counties. 
Furthermore, an examination of similar rolls in western counties 
proves the same fact for Shropshire and Herefordshire. 1 

The machinery for the maintenance of frankpledge was quite 
clearly not in operation in the greater number of the counties 
where the system has not yet been found. The division of the 
four northernmost counties into wards rather than hundreds 
was not designed to provide for the usual administration of 
frankpledge through view in a hundred court. The sheriff's 
tourn, which since 1166 had been charged with this duty, 2 
seems not to have been introduced into the north till a later 
date, in imitation of an institution found useful elsewhere. Thus 
in Northumberland it was first held about the middle of the 
thirteenth century, and then contrary to the custom of the 
county, an encroachment which led Henry III to remit the right 
by charter. 3 In Durham the first account of the institution 

1 Among the rolls in the Public Record Office which show this most clearly 
are Assize Rolls, Nos. 133 (Cumberland), 300 C (Herefordshire), 409 (Lan- 
cashire), 739 (Shropshire), 986 (Westmoreland), and 1057 and 1101 (York- 
shire). In the county palatine of Durham, assize rolls of the reign of Henry III 
which deal with criminal affairs (No. 223) preserve the same silence as to 
frankpledge. The records of the Cheshire palatinate show quite clearly that 
in the time of Edward III tithings were not held responsible for escape of 
fugitives (for the period 15-31 Edward III, see Public Record Office, Chester 
Eyre Rolls, Nos. 13, 14). At so late a date, however, a similar silence is to be 
expected even in frankpledge counties. 

2 Assize of Clarendon, ch. ix, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 

3 Northumberland Assize Rolls, 163-164; Rot. Hundred., ii. 19, 21; Public 
Record Office, List of Sheriffs for England and Wales, 97. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 49 

comes from the fourteenth century ; 1 in Lancashire there had 
been no tourn of the county prior to the time of Henry III ; 2 
and even in Yorkshire, as will be shown later, there was none 
as late as 1293. The failure, moreover, of the hundred and the 
quo warranto rolls to mention view of frankpledge in Lan- 
cashire and Yorkshire and the counties to the north tends 
strongly to show that in franchises, as well as elsewhere in 
these doubtful counties, there were no regular administrative 
arrangements for keeping up frankpledge tithings. 

The absence of the sheriff's tourn, as well as the failure of the 
itinerant justices to have frankpledge suretyship enforced in 
counties outside those in which the activity is regularly recorded, 
may be taken to indicate the exclusion of the institution from 
the extreme north and west not only in the thirteenth cen- 
tury but also in the twelfth. This is an easy inference from a 
thirteenth-century interpretation of the Great Charter. In 1269 
the people of Northumberland successfully appealed to the 
absence of the sheriff's tourn from their county when the charter 
was issued as exempting them from that provision of the re- 
issue of 1 217 which allowed the sheriff twice annually to make 
the usual round of the county. 3 As the full article required the 
sheriff to make view of frankpledge at his fall tourn, that the 
tithings might be maintained through the same pecuniary pen- 
alties as in the time of Henry II, 4 it seems obvious that there 
was no frankpledge in Northumberland prior to the death of 
Henry II in 1189; and the facts already presented warrant the 
same statement as to Lancashire and Durham, and apparently 
for Westmoreland and Cumberland as well. This appeal to 

1 Lapsley, County Palatine of Durham, 195, 331. 

2 Plac. de Quo War., 371. 

3 Northumberland Assize Rolls, 163-164. 

4 Magna Carta of 1217, ch. xlii, Statutes of the Realm, i. 19; Stubbs, Select 
Charters, 347. 

4 



50 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

Magna Carta also has a bearing on the case of every county 
from the records of which frankpledge is missing. What it 
means is this, — that, wherever frankpledge existed in the time 
of the sons and the grandson of Henry II, there, according to 
the legal presumption, it existed in his own time. If the con- 
trary can be proved, the frankpledge system cannot legally be 
maintained. The clause of Magna Carta requiring that tourn, 
view of frankpledge, and tithing be maintained "as was wont" 
establishes these institutions on the basis of conditions as they 
existed during the reign of the first Plantagenet king. Counties 
with no sheriff's tourn and no frankpledge after the issuance 
of the Great Charter had none at least a quarter of a century 
before 121 5; and suspicions as to the absence of frankpledge 
in counties as to which the pipe rolls of Henry II are signifi- 
cantly silent may justly be recalled when in the reigns of 
Henry III and Edward I the silence of other records engenders 
like suspicions. 

Indirect evidence and inference, irresistible though they 
appear in some cases, are not the only testimony in support of 
the thesis that frankpledge was not an institution of the old 
border counties of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the 
last half of the thirteenth century it was the practice for the 
jurors representing a county to declare before the itinerant 
justices what customs, generally observed elsewhere, were not 
in force within their county, so that they might not be held 
responsible for the non-observance of them. Were there a com- 
plete set of the assize rolls, it is possible that they would settle 
the question by categorical statement in regard to every doubt- 
ful county except the palatinates of Durham and Chester; 
but, unfortunately, there are direct, authoritative statements of 
this kind for only three counties. Two of these rolls, as already 
hinted, Palgrave discovered and printed, — those for Shrop- 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 51 

shire and Westmoreland. 1 The Shropshire jurors for 1256 
declared that there was neither murder fine nor tithing in their 
county; 2 and the Westmoreland jurors for 1292 likewise bore 
testimony that in Westmoreland there was no Englishry pre- 
sentment, no murder fine, no tithing, no view of frankpledge, 
and no mainpast, adding, for the sake of emphasis, a further 
declaration to the effect that none of these institutions had ever 
existed in the northern regions beyond the Trent. As to the 
truth of this casual remark, made for the purpose of carrying 
weight with the justices, there can now be scarcely the shadow 
of a doubt if one but assumes with thirteenth-century writers 
that by the Trent River is meant its confluence with the 
Humber rather than its general course. The jurors simply in- 
tended to give the southern boundary of Yorkshire as the 
northern frankpledge limit. 3 

The great objection that has always been made to the accep- 
tance of this testimony of the Westmoreland jurors is that it 
conflicts with a well-known passage concerning Yorkshire in 
the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, 4 where frankpledge is repre- 
sented as in existence among the Eboracenses, who call it ten 
manne tale, or the number of ten men. 5 Pollock and Mait- 
land, however, reject the authority of the Leges, though they 
question the accuracy of the declaration concerning the line 
of the Trent. 6 It is the statement of the Leges and not that 

1 See Palgrave, Commonwealth, ii. p. cxxiii, note 32; also above, p. 44. 

2 The absence of the murder fine from the pipe rolls of the twelfth century 
seems to substantiate this assertion. 

3 A reference to the inquests post mortem of the north and midlands will 
easily show that this is the usual legal sense wherever citra or ultra Trentam 
occurs. 

4 Ch. xx, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 645; Thorpe, Laws, i. 450; Schmid, 
Gesetze, 502. 

5 Palgrave, Commonwealth, ii. pp. cxxiii-cxxiv. 

6 English Law (1895), i. 556. 



52 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

of the jurors which must be rejected. Bishop Stubbs makes it 
clear that the pecuniary exaction in the north known as ten- 
mantale resembled Danegeld rather than any payment con- 
nected with frankpledge. 1 One of the charters to Rievaulx 
definitely affirms that they are the same ; 2 and there are other 
charters that grant quittance both of tenmantale and of frank- 
pledge, as if the two were regarded as altogether different. 3 
The tenmantale itself, as Vinogradoff has shown, was but a unit 
of land measure, a carucate of ten mantales or tofts, the holding 
of ten men. 4 The compiler of the Leges, who seems to have 
been an ecclesiastic of foreign birth resident in Warwickshire, 5 
was evidently misled by the fact that in the somewhat distant 
region of Yorkshire there was a reckoning of men by tens, and 
concluded that this meant the presence of the suretyship tithing. 
A third assize roll, which Palgrave did not discover, and which 
has not before been brought to light in this connection, sets the 
question at rest so far as Yorkshire is concerned; for in 1293 
the jurors at the eyre had it recorded in the usual way that no 
Englishry was presented in the county, that there was no mur- 
der fine, tithing, or frankpledge, that no view of frankpledge or 
tourn of sheriff was held there, 6 and that there was no mainpast 

1 Roger of Hovedon, Chronica (Rolls Series), iii. 242, note 1. 

2 Chartulary of Rievaulx (Surtees Soc), 142. 

3 Ibid. 184; Turton, Honor and Forest of Pickering (North Riding Record 
Soc), iv. 71-72. 

4 Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, 103, note 1; Gale, 
Register of the Honor of Richmond, 22. 

5 Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf, 17-18. Liebermann (ibid. 31) in- 
clines to the view that this payment is identical with that known as view of 
frankpledge, and also understands the Eboracenses as referring to the inhabit- 
ants of the whole ecclesiastical province of York, thus assuming the existence 
of frankpledge throughout the north generally. The whole theory falls with 
the story of the tenmantale. 

6 The tourn in the north seems to have been but a seigniorial affair which 
had to do only with the holdings of one lord. Some surprise has been expressed 
that the tourn at Wakefield (Yorkshire Archaeol. Soc, Record Series, xxxvi. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 53 

obligation for which any one ought to respond. 1 The familiar 
account of the tenmantale, like some other parts of the laws of 
the twelfth century, must be classed as pure legend. 

As to the Welsh border, unquestionable evidence leads to 
the conclusion that in two of the three English counties frank- 
pledge was not regularly maintained as a county institution, 
although by the middle of the thirteenth century the view of 
frankpledge, and possibly frankpledge itself, had found its way 
into franchises. For the third county, the palatinate of Chester, 
the evidence in the real frankpledge period (prior to 1340) is 
insufficient to warrant a decision either for or against the ex- 
istence of the institution. 2 One can only reason from general 
similarity of conditions that the surety system of Cheshire was 
probably not different from that of the county palatinate of 
Durham, 3 or from that of the adjoining counties of Lancashire 
and Shropshire. For the last-named county the direct state- 

p. xi) had nothing to do with frankpledge. The assize roll of 1293 solves the 
problem. 

1 Public Record Office, Assize Roll, No. 1098, 21 Edw. I. 

2 The court leet existed in Manchester and in other parts of the county of 
Lancaster, as well as in Cheshire, when in the fourteenth century frankpledge 
was on the decline. There has been an attempt to show that the leet was an 
ancient institution in these two counties (see Crofton, in Lancashire and 
Cheshire Antiq. Soc, Transactions, v. 137); but this attempt depends largely 
upon the theory, since discredited by Maitland {Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 
Introd.), that the leet was an ancient court. No clear case for the existence of 
these courts in the real age of frankpledge has been made out. They simply 
follow a form for manorial leets which had become common, without having 
any features traceable to frankpledge (Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, 
p. lxxii, note). Such views of frankpledge in the reign of Edward III are to be 
found not only in Cheshire (Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, xvi. 15, 17; Public 
Record Office, Chester Quo Warranto Rolls, No. 1, mm. 2-8), but also in Wales 
{Record of Caernarvon, 183), where frankpledge itself never existed (Maitland, 
Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxxiii). 

3 General regulations for the maintenance of the peace seem to have been 
similar in the two counties. See Lapsley, County Palatine of Durham, 221, 
226-227. 



54 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

ment already given is conclusive. The failure of assize rolls to 
mention frankpledge both here and in Herefordshire is suffi- 
cient to prove that the royal officials were not charged with its 
enforcement. A thirteenth-century record in the Red Book of 
the Exchequer shows, furthermore, that in the county of Here- 
ford no revenues from the usual payment known as view of 
frankpledge were received by the crown, 1 a fact which, in view 
of the general prevalence of such a payment in frankpledge 
counties, indicates that there was no view by the sheriff here, 
just as there was none in counties farther north. In 1284, 
however, the city of Hereford had "of old" held view of frank- 
pledge "without interruption of their lords"; 2 and in 1303 a 
jury found that the lord of the manor of Albrighton in Shrop- 
shire had from legal memory held view of his burgesses. 3 There 
are also on record a few instances in which lords claimed view 
of frankpledge for given vills or manors in these counties; but 
the fact that the information comes in the main from the quo 
warranto pleas shows that there was something about these 
claims which the king's attorneys held to be irregular. 4 It is 
well known that the nobility along the marches often, and es- 
pecially before the conquest of Wales, enjoyed a privileged 
position, with unusual liberties in their own domains ; 5 and it 
is certain that these pleas for the Welsh border region in the time 
of Edward I represent here as elsewhere an effort on the part of 
the king to reduce unwarranted privileges claimed by pre- 

1 Rolls Series, ii. 777. 

2 Matthews, Cardiff Records, i. 14. 

3 Eyton, Shropshire, ii. 156. 

4 In 1292 Earl Humphrey Bohun claimed view of frankpledge for three vills 
in Hereford (Plac. de Quo War., 273). In the next year John le Strange claimed 
the same privilege at Cheswardine in Shropshire by charter of Henry II, but 
was unsuccessful in establishing his title, since his charter did not convey the 
right in specific terms (Eyton, Shropshire, x. 33). 

5 Duncumb, Hereford, i. 80-81. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 55 

scription. 1 Whatever may have been the innovations intro- 
duced through seigniorial influence, the Shropshire assize roll 
of 1256 and the Herefordshire roll of 1257 show clearly enough, 
in presenting their lists of amercements, that frankpledge was 
not regularly enforced in these counties. 

As a general surety system, frankpledge depended upon 
control by royal officials in tourn and in eyre; but outside the 
thirty frankpledge counties direction by either one or both of 
these agencies was lacking. A failure of the assize rolls to men- 
tion frankpledge in the usual connection, and a failure both of 
these records and of the pipe rolls to record the ordinary amerce- 
ments for delinquency of tithings in producing criminals, show 
that the itinerant justices did not enforce the frankpledge obli- 
gation in the old border counties. The non-existence of the 
regular sheriff's tourn in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the counties 
farther north left no regular means of maintaining the tithings 
in those counties; and the general situation in Cheshire, the 
failure of the exchequer to collect view of frankpledge in Here- 
fordshire, and the evidence of jurors on oath in Shropshire, all 
point to a similar state of affairs. In Yorkshire the testimony 
of jurors bears out that of other jurors in Westmoreland, to the 
effect that there was frankpledge neither in their own county 
nor in any of the region north of the Trent, a statement which 
must now be accepted as the expression of a fact well known at 

1 In 1203 there was a hundred in Shropshire, held by William Fitz Alan, 
which owed no suit at the county court (its men never coming before the justices 
or the sheriff for death or burning or on any summons), and within the bounds 
of which, according to the witness of the whole county, no grand assize had ever 
been held (Shropshire Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc, Transactions, 2d series, 
xi. 249). In 1265 a royal charter acquitting of view of frankpledge tenants at 
Cainham and Walton in Shropshire and at Shobdon in Hereford, who held their 
estates by gift of the De Mortimers {Calendar of Charter Rolls, ii. 56), suggests 
that one of this famous name had conferred an unusual right which the king at 
that time felt bound to respect. 



56 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

the end of the thirteenth century. Since Magna Carta stood as 
a legal barrier to the introduction of the system in places where 
it had not existed in the reign of Henry II, the conclusion fol- 
lows that in eight, and probably in nine, English counties 
frankpledge suretyship was not a county institution either in 
the twelfth century or in succeeding ones. 1 

Why frankpledge, which was considered of transcendent 
importance by Norman and Plantagenet kings, was not main- 
tained uniformly throughout England is an interesting question. 
The limits of the frankpledge district had apparently been es- 
tablished by the reign of Henry I in the first third of the twelfth 
century, 2 and had been perpetuated by Magna Carta as they 
stood in the reign of Henry II near the end of that century. 
The absence of the institution in the northernmost counties is 
thus easily explained, for at the Norman Conquest most of 
these districts were either Scottish dependencies or else in a 
semi-independent state. 3 The progress of Norman arms here 
was slow ; it was, indeed, not till after an alienation to Scotland 
by Stephen and a re-conquest by Henry II that all this region 
was finally attached to the English crown. 4 In the parts of the 
border districts continuously retained after 1066 the absence 
of frankpledge is accounted for by the crude and unsettled 
state of administration at that time. As to Yorkshire and 

1 The doubtful county is Cheshire (see above, p. 53, and note 2). The views 
of frankpledge found in townships and manors of Durham and North Durham, 
in the borough of Durham, and in Berwick-on-Tweed in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries (see, for example, Raine, North Durham, 20, and 
App., 152), are quite clearly later jurisdictions having no connection with 
actual frankpledge. Similar rights are to be found in Yorkshire in the same 
period (Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 95, note 4). 

2 See below, pp. 59-60. 

3 See Tout, in Poole's Historical Atlas of Modern Europe, XVIII. 

4 Pipe Rolls of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Durham (Newcastle Soc. of 
Antiquaries), pp. xiv, xv, xix, xxii; Wilson, Victoria History of Cumberland, 
i. 309-310. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 57 

Cheshire, which between them originally included Lancashire, 
and as to Shropshire and Hereford, the problem is not so easily 
solved. 

On the Welsh border one almost expects to find something 
of the same lack of institutional development as on the Scottish ; 1 
but that in Yorkshire, which had been so unruly that the Con- 
queror had found it necessary mercilessly to lay waste a great 
part of the county, 2 his son and his great-grandson should have 
failed to maintain a surety system as strict as that to be found 
elsewhere is somewhat surprising. One explanation is prob- 
ably to be found in the fact that in Norman days Yorkshire was a 
border county, where border conditions no doubt tended to 
make it impossible for local courts to enforce the usual meas- 
ures for the maintenance of the peace. It seems to have been a 
continuance of the same state of affairs that in the thirteenth 
century brought both Yorkshire and Lancashire under the 
influence of the border jurisdiction of the marches. 3 

The ultimate reason, however, for the absence of frankpledge 
in the border counties of Norman days is to be found in the con- 
siderable degree of local administrative autonomy enjoyed by 

1 In the pipe rolls of the twelfth century the county of Hereford is designated 
as Herefordshire in Wales. Conditions here were such as to demand a modi- 
fication of the usual rule concerning outlaws. According to Bracton (fol. 128, 
ii. 338-339), an outlaw might be killed at any time in the counties of Hereford 
and Gloucester near the march of Wales; elsewhere he could be killed with im- 
punity only when he defended himself or attempted flight. It is also to be re- 
membered that the situation was so troublesome in this region that the Con- 
queror did not try to control it himself, but by creating palatinates in Cheshire 
and Shropshire turned it over wholly to powerful nobles. See Ormerod, 
Cheshire, i. 9, 145; Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 294; Eyton, Shrop- 
shire, i. 22, note 2; 70, note 198; 242. 

2 See Ramsay, Foundations of England, ii. 73. 

3 Lapsley, in Amer. Hist. Review, v. 441. In Lancashire (Tait, Manchester, 
153), and probably in other counties without frankpledge, there were so few 
Normans in the reign of William the Conqueror that such an institution was not 
necessary for their protection. 



58 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

these regions during the preceding period, an independence that 
prevented the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon borh system, 
the foundation upon which frankpledge was erected. For the 
old kingdom of Northumbria — the present Yorkshire and the 
region to the north — this explanation seems to be particularly 
true ; for the laws of Athelstan show that this ruler experienced 
no little difficulty in enforcing his borh regulations in his own 
West Saxon districts. 1 But Athelstan, despite his great victory 
of Brunanburh, did not succeed in wresting Northumbria entirely 
from the control of the Danes, who had hitherto held it. Succes- 
sive rebellions under native kings for two decades more make it 
certain that regular Anglo-Saxon administration could not have 
been established until in 958 Edgar " succeeded to the kingdom 
as well of the West Saxons as of the Mercians and Northum- 
brians." 2 Even during the reign of this strong king, Oslac, the 
earl of the last-named people, seems to have been nearly inde- 
pendent, 3 and the right of the Danish parts of England to have 
"as good laws as they best may choose " 4 was especially con- 
ceded. Although Edgar expressly declared that every man 
whether within or without the cities should be in borh, 5 the con- 
trol of his weak successors could not have been such as to enable 
them to force this innovation upon the population of the wild 
and semi-independent north. During the reigns of Edward the 
Confessor and Harold, earls Siward and Tostig, in an earldom 
now limited to Yorkshire, 6 showed the same spirit of independ- 
ence as their predecessors, the latter noble even -setting aside 

1 5 Athelstan, Prol., 3; 4 Athelstan, ii, iii. 2: Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 166- 
167, 171. 

2 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Rolls Series), ii. 02. 

3 Green, Conquest of England, 325-328. 

4 4 Edgar, ii. 1, xii, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 210-213 passim. 
6 4 Edgar, iii, ibid. 210-211. 

6 Through alienation of territory to Scotland. See Green, Conquest of 
England, 471. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 59 

the laws of Canute. 1 Green declares that on the eve of the 
Conquest no king's writ ran in the Northumbria of Siward ; 2 
and Ramsay is equally positive that the same was true to the 
west of a line drawn from the Humber to Bristol Channel and 
the mouth of the Exe. 3 The failure of the king's authority in 
precisely those regions where frankpledge was never developed 
thus becomes an illuminating fact. 

To prove that the frankpledge system was in force in each of 
the thirty counties from the south of Yorkshire to the southern 
coast of England, and from the North Sea to Land's End and 
the Welsh border, there is convincing evidence. An examina- 
tion of the printed hundred and quo warranto rolls shows that 
view of frankpledge — the session of court which had the duty 
of putting in tithing those who were liable to its obligations — 
is mentioned in every one of these counties in the reign of 
Edward I. In the Public Record Office there are assize rolls for 
all but two of these counties, which show that in the same reign 
itinerant justices systematically enforced the obligation of the 
tithing by a pecuniary penalty in case of default. For the two 
counties, Derby and Nottingham, the records of which are want- 
ing for this period, there are rolls for the opening years of the 
reign of Edward III that establish the fact of the same enforce- 
ment of the obligation. 

Within this region, moreover, the regular maintenance of 
frankpledge antedated the reign of Edward I by more than a 
century. According to the twenty-three pipe rolls of Henry II, 
from 1 1 66 to the end of the reign, in twenty-nine of the counties 
amercements were laid before the justices in eyre upon tithings 
which had failed to produce offending members as required by 

1 A circumstance which Page (in Archaeologia, li. pt. i. 145) believes points to 
a continuance of the Northumbrian witan to so late a date. 

2 Conquest of England, 492, 561. 

3 Foundations of England, ii. 22. 



60 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

law. Not only is frankpledge to be found in the thirtieth county, 
Cambridge, in the reign of Edward I, as just shown, but the joint 
pipe roll of this county with Huntingdon for the ninth year of 
Richard I, containing mention of not fewer than nine frank- 
pledge cases, makes it reasonably certain that even in the reign 
of Henry II Cambridge, no less than the counties round about 
it, had the system ; and even for a still earlier time it is possible 
to find indication of the same distribution. In view of the per- 
sistence with which William of Malmesbury and the leges of the 
first half of the twelfth century present the idea that the law of 
frankpledge was for the kingdom as a whole, there need be little 
hesitancy in affirming that, at least as early as the reign of 
Henry I, the institution was in force throughout that compact 
portion of England in which, as the records show, the frank- 
pledge tithing was maintained from the age of Henry II to that 
of Edward III. 1 

As to the prevalence of the frankpledge obligation in the vari- 
ous townships of the thirty counties it is of course possible to 
speak only in general terms. An enactment of Henry II in 
1 1 66 declares that no one, whether within or without a castle, 
shall prevent a sheriff from entering his court and land to make 
view of frankpledge, in order that all may be in suretyship and 
put under frankpledge before the sheriff. 2 That there were 
in the thirteenth century a few communities exempt from this 
requirement even in districts where frankpledge was the rule 
has long been known ; but it does not appear that these exemp- 
tions were so numerous as was formerly supposed. Quittance 

1 A charter grant of Henry I, dating somewhere between 1114 and 1129 
and directed to the sheriffs of all counties in which the abbot of St. Edmunds 
had lands, forbade the men of St. Edmunds to go out of their own soke "pro 
plegiis suis et friborgis et treingis renovandis aliter quam facere solebant" 
(Eng. Hist. Review, xxiv. 427). 

2 Assize of Clarendon, ch. ix, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 61 

of frankpledge in royal charters prior to the time of Edward I 
seems usually to have been interpreted by the grantee as a 
concession from the king of the right to hold view of frank- 
pledge and to enjoy its profits. 1 Even when charters specify 
that tenants in a given place are exempt from frankpledge, 
reference is probably to the payment by that name and not to 
frankpledge suretyship. Grants exempting both from frank- 
pledge and from view of frankpledge 2 suggest merely the trans- 
fer of the payment and the jurisdiction from royal to seigniorial 
hands. The number of actual immunities was therefore prob- 
ably much smaller than a reading of charters would seem to 
show. 

The most prominent examples of the exemption of communi- 
ties from the duties of the tithing have hitherto been sought in 
certain boroughs; but, since boroughs often had unusual privi- 
leges, such cases need not be regarded as significant. Of Bristol, 
Worcester, and Ilchester it is recorded that in the early thir- 
teenth century they had no frankpledge ; 3 but Bristol and 
Ilchester had views of frankpledge about half a century later, 4 
and there is some reason for supposing that in these two cases 
the entries in the rolls are to be understood as showing merely 
that there was no frankpledge with which the royal officials had 
to do. 5 Henry II decreed that no one in a city or a borough 

1 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), *• 5^5, and note 1. 

2 As in Dugdale, Monasticon, vii. 931. 

3 Palgrave, Commonwealth, ii. p. cxxiii, note 32; Healey, Somersetshire Pleas 
(Somerset Record Soc), 85. 

4 Plac. de Quo War., 246, 690; Seyer, Charters of Bristol, 34. 

5 Watson, Pleas of the Crown for Bristol, 1221, p. 104. According to the 
record (ibid. 136), the court appears loath to accept the statement of the jurors, 
declaring that "it must be discussed." In 1243 the bailiffs of Ilchester plead 
that according to royal charter they are not to answer beyond the walls of the 
town (Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 210). In the borough of Tavistock the 
sheriff appears to have held tourn only before the royal charter was granted 
(Rot. Hundred., i. 81). 



62 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

should have or receive men in his house or his soke or on his 
land unless such persons were either in his mainpast or in frank- 
pledge. 1 A writer in the time of John shows that the municipal 
ward had an organization which corresponded to frankpledge ; 2 
and the word ward often appears in assize rolls as an equivalent 
of the word tithing. The assertion in a statute of 1473 tnat 
most of the boroughs and towns of substance within the realm 
had leets and views of frankpledge, 3 though not positive evi- 
dence for the existence of such courts and for their enforcement 
of frankpledge two or three centuries earlier, is of considerable 
assistance in forming conclusions for the age of frankpledge. 
Whatever may have been the grounds for the exemption of 
some boroughs from the control of the king's justices in the 
time of Henry III, there can be no question of the fact that in 
the reign of Edward I cities and boroughs had in many cases 
to answer at the eyre for matters relating to suretyship just as 
did ordinary vills, 4 and that in a growing town still subject to 

1 Assize of Clarendon, ch. x, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 

2 Liebermann, Consiliatio Cnuti, 13; Palgrave, Commonwealth, ii. p. cxxv, 
note 34. 

3 Statutes of the Realm, ii. 442. 

4 As shown by the assize rolls in the Public Record Office for the period 
between 1279 and 1302, the more prominent places which had a responsibility 
concerning frankpledge before the itinerant justices were the following: borough 
of Northampton, Assize Roll, No. 620, mm. 76-77; vill of Coventry, No. 956, 
m. 46; boroughs of Dudley and Kidderminster, No. 1026, m. 38, and borough 
of Pershore, m. 38ft; vill of Bedford, No. 12, m. 296, and vill of Dunstable, 
m. 326; borough of Abingdon, No. 43, m. 27; borough of Reading, No. 46, 
m. 31; boroughs of Bodmin and Helston, No. 118; city of Canterbury, No. 
376, m. 62, and city of Rochester, m. 66&; London, — vill of Westminster, 
No. 554, m. 64, ward of Aldersgate, No. 547, m. 3, ward of Faringdon, m. 6, 
ward of Billingsgate, m. 18, and ward of Cripplegate, m. 30; the borough within 
the walls of Oxford, No. 708, m. 41, and borough of Banbury, m. 476; borough 
of Newcastle, No. 804, m. 58; borough of South wark, No. 876, m. 42ft; city of 
Chichester, No. 926, m. 27ft, and borough of Arundel, m. 21&; borough of 
Chippenham, No. 1001, m. 16, borough of Malmesbury, m. 44ft, borough 
of Wilton, m. 61, city of Sarum, m. 62, and borough of Marlborough, m. 66. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 63 

a feudal lord this requirement was likely to be the rule. In con- 
clusion it may be said on this point that, although town records 
are often wanting for the frankpledge period, as well as for later 
times, such records as there are indicate that what is said of the 
court leet in the fifteenth century may be said of frankpledge 
itself in the thirteenth, — that it was found in most of the towns 
of England. 1 

Besides some few boroughs and districts that may have been 
specifically exempted by royal charter, there were, according to 
the records, two other classes of places in frankpledge counties 
in which the system was wanting. One of these categories in- 
cluded certain forests. Thus, in 122 1 there was no tithing surety- 
ship in the forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, 2 though a certain 
forester at Westbury is spoken of as being not only in frank- 
pledge but at the head of a tithing as well. 3 In forest pleas else- 
where frankpledge is mentioned in the usual way. 4 In the other 
class of places the system had existed but had become extinct, 
a fact that is to be attributed not so much to laxness in main- 

1 Besides those named above, the following are also mentioned: Bristol and 
Tetbury (Plac. de Quo War., 259) ; Gloucester (Maitland, Pleas of the Crown 
for Gloucester, No. 450; Atkyns, Gloucestershire, 60); Tewkesbury (Plac. de 

Quo War., 246); Derby, Lichfield, and Burton-on-Tient (Cox and Markham, 
Records of Northampton, ii. 141-142); Nottingham (Stevenson, Records of 
Nottingham, i. 66); Leicester (Bateson, Records of Leicester, i. 365, ii. 153); 
Huntingdon (Griffith, Records of Huntingdon, 20); Hertford (Rot. Hundred., i. 
194); Wycombe (ibid. 34); Shaftesbury (Mayo, Records of Shaftesbury, 17); 
Calne (Marsh, Calne, 24, 34; Rot. Hundred., ii. 236); Winchester (Kitchin, 
Charter of Edward III to St. Giles Fair, 34); Windsor (Plac. de Quo War., 82); 
Wallingford (Hedges, Wallingford, i. 316, ii. 10-11); Guildford (Plac. de Quo 
War., 743; Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 94); Norwich (Public Record Office, 
Pipe Roll, 32 Hen. II, Norfolk); Ipswich (Black Book of the Admiralty, Rolls 
Series, ii. 130-131); Yarmouth (Merewether and Stephens, Boroughs and 
Municipal Corporations, ii. 755-757); Bury St. Edmunds (Gross, Gild Mer- 
chant, ii. 33; Chron. Jocelinide Brakelonda, Camden Soc., 74); Colchester 
(Harrod, Court Rolls of Colchester, 8). 

2 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 183. 

3 Ibid. No. 315. See below, p. 89. 

4 Turner, Select Pleas of the Forest, 71. 



64 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

taining tithings, as to the removal of tenants from a manor where 
they had formerly lived, and to their consequent inability to keep 
up the tithing which they had constituted. An example of this 
situation is found in 1324 on the abbot of Burton's manor of 
" Huncyndon " in Derbyshire. 1 

In view of the facts just presented, the oft-repeated assertion 
of Palgrave that frankpledge did not exist in portions of the 
counties lying in the former kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia 
must be regarded as misleading. 2 The presumption is that 
this form of suretyship was maintained generally in the thirty 
counties, except where there happened to be one of the peculiar 
conditions above mentioned. The usual thirteenth-century 
assumption that a quittance of frankpledge by the king conveyed 
authority to a lord or a corporation to maintain the system, 
was based on the idea that suretyship of the tithing was an 
institution of general importance which must be sustained by 
local agency if not by royal power. The Great Charter of 12 17, 
as already noted, regarded it as prevailing generally, and directed 
sheriffs to make view of frankpledge in the accustomed manner, 
that tithings might be kept intact and the king's peace main- 
tained. Bracton goes even beyond the broad ground of his pre- 
decessors in declaring that every man of the required classes 
shall be in frankpledge or in mainpast. 3 Such assertions alone 
militate against the theory that any considerable number of 
communities within the frankpledge bounds were without the 
suretyship of tithings. 

Conclusive evidence against it, however, seems to be found in 

1 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, v. pt. i. 87. Huncyndon is probably 
Hunsdon. The absence of frankpledge from the vill of Killcot in Gloucester in 
1 22 1 may have been due to negligence. At any rate, the whole vill was fined for 
the flight of a murderer (Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 364). 

2 See Palgrave, Commonwealth, i. 196, 203; ii. p. cxxiii. 

3 Fol. 124&, ii. 306. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE , 65 

the hundred and the quo warranto rolls. One result of the 
inquiry represented in these registers and of the pleas based 
upon it is that the records, so far as they have been preserved, 
contain the names of all the hundreds, boroughs, hamlets, vills, 
and manors for which in the reign of Edward I view of frank- 
pledge was held by any one except the king's officers. Since, 
according to Magna Carta and the practice of Henry II, this 
view was to be made regularly by the sheriff, the performance 
of the function by private persons, although of frequent occur- 
rence, is, at least from the legal point of view, to be regarded as 
the exception rather than the rule. Yet such instances are sur- 
prisingly numerous in these rolls. Not only are practically all 
of the views mentioned in private hands, but in only six of the 
thirty regular counties are there less than ten of them; while 
nine counties have between ten and fifty, six between fifty and 
a hundred, and nine more than a hundred. Norfolk leads the 
list with more than two hundred and fifty, and the small counties 
of Huntingdon and Bedford have respectively in the neighbor- 
hood of a hundred and ten and a hundred and forty-five. The 
little county of Rutland alone has about twenty. Derby, North- 
ampton, and Nottingham, counties for which this series of 
records hardly ever mentions view of frankpledge, have a good 
many views in the quo warranto rolls of Edward III. The num- 
ber of communities in each county for which, as shown by the 
published rolls, view of frankpledge was held in the time of 
Edward I is indicated in the table on the next page. 

Fortunately, one is able to supplement the results of this 
count by the use of other records, so that conclusions need not 
rest wholly upon the accidental circumstance of usurpation here 
and there of what Edward I considered his rights. The assize 
rolls and the pipe rolls show that it was the custom of the itiner- 
ant justices to enforce the frankpledge obligation throughout 

5 



66 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

View of Frankpledge in Hundred and Quo Warranto Rolls. 



County. 



Bedford 
Berks . 
Buckingham 
Cambridge 
Cornwall 
Derby . 
Devon . 

8 Dorset . 

9 Essex . 
io Gloucester 

1 1 Hampshire 

12 Hereford * 

13 Hertford . 

14 Huntingdon 

15 Kent . . 

16 Leicester . 

17 Lincoln . 

18 Middlesex 

19 Norfolk . 

20 Northampton 

21 Nottingham 

22 Oxford 

23 Rutland 

24 Somerset 

25 Stafford 

26 Suffolk 

27 Surrey . 

28 Sussex . 

29 Warwick 

30 Wilts . 

31 Worcester 



Bor- 
oughs. 



Ham- 
lets. 



Vills. 



11 

28 



1 

26 

9 

93 
3 

59 



7 

1 

1 
5 
4 
3 
24 
2 
1 



Manors. 



IS 

3i 
2 

7 
7 
3 

1 

40 
3 



24 
7 

13 
6 



1 
11 

3 
6 

7 

11 
6 

24 



Other 
com- 
munities 
and un- 
specified 
ones. 



126 
11 
84 

118 
3 

75 

1 

93 



3 
38 
62 

55 
12 
68 

49 

194 

16 

36 

20 

30 
6 

137 
12 

*5 
7i 

5 



Total 
number 
of com- 
muni- 
ties. 



146 

12 

129 

149 

10 

7 

78 

2 

97 

138 

3 

3 

58 
112 

7i 
12 

174 
58 

258 
16 

1 

57 
21 

34 

13 

150 

28 

24 

119 

8 

2 



1 See above, pp. 54-55. 



DISTRIBUTION OF FRANKPLEDGE 67 

the frankpledge counties, and prove in a convincing way that 
there was no lack of frankpledge even in those places which 
stand low in the table just given. In the pipe rolls one finds a 
wide geographical distribution within the counties as early as 
the twelfth century ; and the assize rolls reveal not only the same 
condition in the thirteenth century, but also the maintenance of 
tithings in the extreme northern parts of the northernmost 
frankpledge counties. 1 When it is remembered, moreover, that 
outside of the privileged sections the sheriff not only held the 
view at regular intervals, but also expected to collect a sub- 
stantial revenue in so doing, there is every reason for assuming 
that, except in such unusual cases as have been mentioned, 
frankpledge suretyship was maintained throughout the thirty 
counties. 

The frankpledge system, although one of the clearest mani- 
festations of strong central government in the England of the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, nevertheless could not escape 
the influence of that rule of usage which determined all feudal 
relations: it was not carried into new territory, for the reason 
that its introduction would have involved an infringement, by 
the king's sheriffs and justices, of a local freedom from such 
imposition which constituted a highly prized custom of the 
county. To compensate for the lack of such a force for the 
preservation of the peace, thirteenth-century law held the vill 
responsible for responding to the hue and capturing criminals ; 2 
but in so large a part of the land was frankpledge suretyship the 

1 The eyre roll for Derby, 4 Edward III, mentions the amercement of tithings 
for the escape of fugitives at Chesterfield and at Hathersage (Public Record 
Office, Assize Roll, No. 166, m. 25ft). A similar roll for Stafford, 21 Edward I, 
(No. 804, mm. 54, 56), shows a similar responsibility in the hundred of Tot- 
monslow, which touches both Cheshire and Derby, and also in vills of the 
hundred of Seisdon near Shropshire. 

3 See Parker, Lancashire Assize Rolls (Record Soc. for Lancashire and 
Cheshire), i. 88, 106; ii. 280. 



68 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

established order that both legal compilations and legal enact- 
ments could afford to ignore exceptional conditions in the out- 
lying districts. If these districts are left out of the account, the 
regular maintenance of the institution in thirty of the counties 
and in many of the most populous and prosperous English 
municipalities, including London, 1 no less than in small towns 
still subject to seigniorial control, is such as to show in practice 
a general adherence to the rule that the men of all the vills of 
the realm were to-be in the suretyship of the tithings. 

1 Hudson (Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. kxi) is in error in assuming 
that frankpledge in London meant the providing of only a very few sureties, 
sometimes of but two. In the reference which he cites (Liber Alius, ed. Riley, i. 
90) frankpledge is used as Bracton uses it for mainpast (cf. Bracton, fol. 124&, ii. 
306; and Sharpe, Calendar of the Letterbooks of London, Book A, p. 216). The 
suretyship of the two pledges had to be given by the stranger within three days 
after he came to live in the ward. View of frankpledge, at which men might be 
regularly enrolled, was held but once or twice a year (see Liber Albus, i. 38 ; 
Ogle, Royal Letters to Oxford, 39-40). 



CHAPTER III 
ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS OF FRANKPLEDGE 

Interest in frankpledge suretyship is not due solely to the 
extraordinary character and wide territorial distribution of the 
system. Including as it did the greater part of medieval Eng- 
lishmen, it formed one of the conditions in the environment of 
the man in humble rank which shaped the social and political 
sides of his life. 

The number of persons in frankpledge may, indeed, as easily 
be overestimated as the number of counties in which the insti- 
tution existed. It has been observed that prior to the middle 
of the twelfth century a legal compiler intimated that even 
before his day the law in theory required all in the realm to be 
in tithing ; * yet it is perfectly clear that this broad assertion, 
like the requirement in Saxon law that all free men should be in 
borh, went farther than did the rule as it was actually enforced. 
In other passages the same writer recognizes the fact that some 
men were not pledged by tithings, but that the host stood pledge 
for the guest, and, according to a later edition of the work, the 
man of rank for his household. 2 Although nearly all men were 
perhaps at one time under obligation to a performance of duty 
in tithings, yet a considerable and, if conclusions may be 
drawn from a comparison of twelfth with thirteenth century 
statements, a constantly growing number were exempt. 

1 Leges Edw. Con/., xx, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 645 ; Schmid, Gesetze, 502 ; 
Thorpe, Laws, i. 450. 

3 Leges Edw. Conf., xxi, xxiii, in Liebermann, i. 647, 648. 

69 



70 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

Even before trie Leges Edwardi were written a jurist who set 
forth in the usual sweeping fashion the rule that all free males 
above the age of twelve should be in frankpledge, immediately 
proceeded to make an exception by adding that certain classes 
were required to be in the pledge of their lords, 1 an indication 
that qualifications to these broad assertions were often per- 
fectly understood even when not expressed. Bracton, who lays 
down the general principle that every male above twelve, 
whether free or non-free, ought to be in frankpledge, further 
increases the list of exceptions ; 2 and Britton names still others 
that were recognized by English law in his day. 3 

The age when a youth must be put in tithing is given as 
twelve by thirteenth-century writers. Britton, however, who 
in one passage agrees with Fleta and the Mirror of Justices on 
this point, in another speaks as if fourteen were the age, 4 an 
impression which has often found its way into works of modern 
days. This difference in statement is probably due to a differ- 
ence in local usage; but Britton's earlier assertion, agreeing 
as it does with Bracton's, 5 gives the law as generally followed 
in the fifteenth no less than in the thirteenth century. 6 The 
jurors at the manorial view of frankpledge, as well as those 
at the sheriff's tourn, presented persons above twelve years of 
age who were out of tithing. 7 Legal theory on this point seems 
to have been influenced by the requirement of Canute that all 
above the age of twelve should take an oath to observe the 

1 Leges Henriciy viii. 2, 2a, in Liebermann, Cesetze, i. 554. 

2 Fol. 124&, ii. 304-306. 

3 Nichols's edition, i. 48-49. 

4 Ibid. 48, 181; Fleta, 40, 112; Mirror of Justices, 39, 41. 
6 Britton, i. 181. 

6 See Cart. St. Peter of Gloucester (Rolls Series), iii. 221; Dugdale, Mo- 
nasticon, ii. 83. 

7 Maitland, Court Baron, 68, 71, 72, 97; Young, Dulwich College, ii. 
281. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 71 

peace. 1 This oath, which Bracton says was by the Leges 
Edwardi required in the twelfth century also, 2 was at that 
time, he seems to assume, made at the view of frankpledge just 
as it was in his own day. 3 There was, it is true, an argument 
for excusing such young boys from duty in the tithing on the 
ground that they obviously could not perform the services re- 
quired of it; but the rule as to taking the oath seems to have 
been rigorously enforced both by royal and by manorial officials. 
Until 1267 persons over twelve years of age appear to have been 
required to attend the sheriff's tourn; for it was held that, 
although minors could not make presentments, they ought 
nevertheless to be present to take oath and to report any felonies 
which they knew of. 4 After 1267 such persons were still required 
to attend an inquisition concerning a death. 

Only one class of persons above the age of twelve was, ac- 
cording to Bracton, under suretyship of no kind whatever. 
Men who travelled about so much that they were not to be 
considered as belonging to one place more than to another could 
not be put in frankpledge, for this form of security required a 
residence of a year and a day. 5 Nor could their good behavior 
be assured by any other kind of pledging; for such a vagrant 
existence would as a rule so lay them open to suspicion that no 
man would assume responsibility for them permanently, and no 
one would be likely to permit them to remain at his home more 
than two nights, since a third would render him liable for them 
during their sojourn. The extraneus transiens (the vagabundus 
of the fourteenth century) was a person who often fled after 
committing a crime; but the royal courts always admitted 

1 2 Canute, xxi, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 324-325. 

2 See also below, p. 130. 

3 Fol. 1246, ii. 306. 

4 Coke, Second Institute (1671), 147. 

5 The time from one view of frankpledge to the next. 



72 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

such itinerancy as excusing a vill for not having a criminal in 
frankpledge. 

All persons except vagrants, then, were, as Bracton held, 
required either to be in frankpledge or in the mainpast or per- 
sonal pledge of a responsible person, or else to have some quali- 
fication, such as rank, order, or property, which served as surety 
in place of frankpledge. 1 Such general exceptions to the rule 
that all males over twelve, both free and serf, should be pledged 
by tithings may now be considered. 

A tacit recognition of the principle that some persons were by 
their rank and standing excused from finding surety for their 
observance of the peace was observed under Anglo-Saxon rule 
in England. Though legislators more than once declared that 
every freeman must have a borh to lead him to justice, certain 
men were evidently exempt from this requirement, 2 a fact which 
may be reconciled to the letter of the law by the assumption 
that, since they were above the grade of ordinary freemen, they 
were not to be regarded as subject to provisions applicable to 
that class. A more practical reason for this exemption was, 
however, that such persons usually had property upon which it 
was possible to levy in case they became obdurate breakers of 
the peace. The magnate, or even the small lord with but a few 
dependents, might through the lands which he held be easily 
reached in a way that would bring him to terms; but, as has 
been pointed out, justice could in many cases be had only with 
great difficulty from the ordinary freeman who was landless, or 
who had at best but a small amount of property. Hence the 
necessity that the latter be in borh. When in the reign of Henry I 
frankpledge is found in operation, the same principle holds 
good. From the reign of William the Conqueror it became 
necessary for the king to look to the ruling class of Norman 

1 Fol. 1246, ii. 306. 

2 See above, p. 19. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 73 

magnates to keep in subjection the masses of the vanquished 
race; and the nobility, already with some jurisdictional powers 
derived from Saxon days, increased their ability to perform 
such an office by acquiring feudal justiciary rights from time 
to time. The Saxon lord had of old been held responsible for 
the retainers whom he lodged. A later text of the Leges Ed- 
war di, which Liebermann dates between 1140 and 1159, shows 
that archbishops, bishops, earls, and barons were of great im- 
portance in maintaining the peace; for they were required to 
hold both their knights and their household officers and servants 
in their own pledge, and, if the hue and cry were raised on 
account of any of these, to punish the offenders in their own 
courts in case they had grants of "sake and soke and toll and 
team and infangenethef" * The magnates themselves, both lay 
and spiritual, were, according to the medieval conception, cus- 
todians of the peace, and hence needed no surety to keep it. 
If they offended against their suzerain or their vassals, the 
feudal law of forfeiture afforded a means of punishment which 
was considered adequate. As to their treatment of peasant 
dependents no one cared; but the mere fact of their lordship 
over such persons was assumed to be a sufficient pledge of 
honorable conduct toward them. They were not expected to 
be in frankpledge. 2 

The same rule applied to lords in general. The importance 
of personal lordship in maintaining the public peace has al- 
ready been traced as far back as the time of Athelstan ; and the 
requirement that the lord act as surety for his own household, 
firmly fixed in Saxon law by the time of Ethelred, was carried 
over into Norman days. This arrangement could not, however, 
be reciprocal like frankpledge, for the dependents of the house- 

1 Leges Edw. Con/., xxi, xxi.i, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 647. 

2 Bracton, fol. 124&, ii. 306. 



74 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

hold were unable to pledge the good conduct of its head. The 
lord, therefore, being entirely removed from participation in any 
system of peace pledge except in the capacity of surety, could 
himself be brought to accountability only through the agency 
of the officers of the king or of some other suzerain. 

The knights formed another class whose order excused them 
from frankpledge. Bracton and Britton both recognize this 
rule as in full force in their day. 1 At an earlier time, about the 
middle of the twelfth century, it is stated that archbishops, 
bishops, earls, and barons were required to have their knights 
in their mainpast to insure order. 2 One may well doubt, how- 
ever, whether this was true in the thirteenth century, at least 
when the knights were not connected with a magnate's house- 
hold establishment ; for, according to Britton, their eldest sons, 
or, as he says in a later and perhaps more corrupt passage, 
their children, then enjoyed exemption from frankpledge, and 
nothing more is said of knights in mainpast. 3 Bracton affirms, 
though in a somewhat vague way, that relatives of knights were 
exempt. The rule that knights and their eldest sons were ex- 
cused was certainly enforced, and was so well recognized as to 
be still in operation in leets at the end of the fifteenth century, 
after real frankpledge had long since fallen into desuetude. 4 

The clergy also were by virtue of their calling released from 
any responsibility connected with peace suretyship; for not 
only was their very order assumed to be sufficient pledge that 
they would never be guilty of breach of peace, but the per- 
formance of such police service as membership in a tithing 
implied was too palpably of a secular nature to be expected of 



1 Bracton, fol. 1246, ii. 304; Britton, i. 48. 

2 Leges Edw. Con/., xxi, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 647. 

3 Britton, i. 181. 

4 L. T. Smith, Common-place Book, 161. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 75 

them. Such an exemption is certainly to be understood in the 
Saxon legislation requiring all freemen to be in borh; and, like 
the privilege of the magnate and the lord, it also passed on down 
to frankpledge days. Not only was this rule clearly stated in the 
legal theory of the thirteenth century, 1 but in actual practice it 
was so well recognized when records were first kept that any 
man who could succeed in passing himself off even as an itiner- 
ant clerk escaped frankpledge duty. 2 In 1292 a student at Cam- 
bridge, who had been distrained to a performance of tithing 
duty by the lord of the manor in which his home was, recovered 
damages in the King's Bench, the court holding that the lord 
acted against the law in thus demanding suit of leet from a 
clerk. 3 In boroughs, however, clerks who were not clergymen 
strictly speaking, and who had families and engaged in busi- 
ness, were sometimes put in frankpledge. 4 In the Mirror of 
Justices there is even a declaration, but a very doubtful and 
contradictory one, that clerks must be in frankpledge. 5 

Besides those whose nobility or order exempted them from 
frankpledge, there was a third class whose freehold property 
served as security for their observance of the peace. In the 
middle of the thirteenth century the rule was that the holding 
of a free tenement or of real property in a borough constituted 
a surety sufficient to take the place of frankpledge ; 6 but this 
rule could hardly have been enforced literally, for its observance 
would have made frankpledge of very slight importance in 
towns in which the typical burgher owned a burgage. 

1 Bracton, fol. 1246, ii. 304; Britton, i. 48. 

2 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 58. 

3 Year Book, 20-21 Edw. I, 297. 

4 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. lxvii. 

5 Mirror of Justices, 41; and cf. p. 39, which shows that clerks were exempt 
from attending the view of frankpledge. 

6 Bracton, fol. 124&, ii. 306. 



76 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

Whether or not the mere personal status of a freeman was 
sufficient to excuse him is a question upon which there is room 
for difference of opinion, but which seems in the main to de- 
mand a negative answer. The assize rolls, which regularly de- 
clare that a man is not in frankpledge quia liber, appear at first 
sight to show that the itinerant justices recognized such an ex- 
emption ; * but it is very evident that some of these exempt 
persons could plead other reasons than their free status. The 
entry concerning a man in Staffordshire who "was not in frank- 
pledge because he was a freeman" has the significant addition 
that "he held six acres of land freely." Another man, John 
Sautcheverel, who had no chattels himself but was the son of a 
knight of the same name who held a large amount of land in 
Staffordshire and Derbyshire, 2 was thus likely to be excused 
not only as a freeholder but also as the relative of a knight. 
Here, then, seems to be good reason for believing that the ex- 
emption was made because of a free holding rather than be- 
cause of a free status. The word freeman may be merely a 
technical term, just as it was in the sixteenth century. Against 
making this explanation universal, however, seem to stand the 
words of Bracton, who in one passage designates among those 
exempt from frankpledge the magnate, the clerk, the knight 
and his relatives, the free man, and the like. 3 Yet, as already 
observed, Bracton fully recognizes the principle that, aside 
from the classes exempt because of rank, order, property, or 
similar qualification, the rest of the population both free and 

1 Thus Healey, the editor of the rolls published by the Somerset Record 
Society, considers the words quia liber conclusive evidence that only villains 
were in frankpledge. See his Somersetshire Pleas, p. xxx. 

8 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, iv. 72 and note, 73 and note. 

3 "Magnates, milites et eorum parentes, clericus, liber homo et hujusmodi" 
(fol. 1246, ii. 304). Nichols in his edition of Britton (i. 181, note) regards "liber 
homo" as referring to the military tenant of Norman times; but if this is true 
"milites" in the passage just quoted is superfluous. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 77 

serf must be in tithings. In short, whatever rule is laid down, it 
must be remembered that the matter of exempting freemen, 
and the other classes as well, varied with local custom. 1 

It may fairly be assumed, then, that those in frankpledge were 
not exclusively villains. The development of the system from 
Saxon borh, which was for freemen only, shows very clearly 
that in the early Norman period, when frankpledge is first men- 
tioned, the general position of the masses could not have been 
so far depressed as to bring only the unfree into tithing. It 
appears, indeed, that this depression came about, to a consider- 
able extent, as a result of the writings of Romanizing jurists in 
the latter half of the twelfth century. Specific mention, in the 
thirteenth century, of the fact that a man in frankpledge is a 
villain, when nothing is said as to the status of other men in 
tithing in the same neighborhood, seems to show that it was 
not unusual for freemen to be in frankpledge suretyship. Even in 
the early fourteenth century such persons were still sometimes 
in tithing. This had been the case in the hamlet of " Huncyn- 
don " in Derbyshire, where the tenants had been liber e tenen- 
tes and not nativi; but by 1324 such tenants were no longer 
there. 2 Although at Dudley in Worcestershire a man was not 
in tithing in 1274 quia liber de bur go? yet at Norwich about 
13 15, in spite of Bracton's assertion that the possession of real 
property in a city was sufficient surety in itself, free burghers 
were undoubtedly in frankpledge. 4 In the city of Canterbury 
freemen might also be in frankpledge. 5 In London the ordi- 

1 "Secundum consuetudinem patriae " (Bracton, ii. 304). That this expres- 
sion refers to local custom is conclusively shown by its repetition, a few lines 
farther on, in relation to a practice in but one county. 

2 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, v. pt. i. 87-88. See above, p. 64, note 1. 

3 Public Record Office, Assize Roll, No. 1026, m. 38. 

4 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. lvi. 
6 Rot. Hundred., i. 203. 



78 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

nances of the lorimer's gild forbade the receiving of any stranger, 
whether master or journeyman, until he was in frankpledge ; ! 
and in Leicester as late as 1376 some three hundred men were 
in frankpledge, including workmen, masters, and servants. 2 
It by no means appears, moreover, that the royal assent, in 
1293, to the famous customs of Kent, which declared that "all 
the bodies of Kentishmen be free," 3 destroyed frankpledge in 
that county. The adherence to these customs at a slightly 
earlier period certainly had no such effect. In the early four- 
teenth century, however, to be in a rural tithing in East England 
was synonymous with being in villainage; 4 yet in 1329 a free- 
man on an Essex manor is mentioned as being in frankpledge. 5 
These few facts will perhaps point to the conclusion that the 
boroughs longest retained frankpledge as a general police 
measure ; while in the country districts, after the thirteenth cen- 
tury, the man who held his land by a free tenure usually had 
property interests extensive enough to assure an ample court 
payment through confiscation in case he became a fugitive from 
justice. Frankpledge was unquestionably an institution that 
chiefly affected villains ; 6 but to affirm that the freeman as 
such was released from frankpledge obligations is clearly 
incorrect. 

Persons either physically or mentally unable to perform such 
duties as frankpledge imposed were not held responsible for 
their discharge. About 1290 a London writer says that deaf 
mutes, sick folk, idiots, and lepers were exempt. 7 There certainly 

1 Liber Custumarum (ed. Riley), pt. i. 79. 

2 Bateson, Records of Leicester, ii. 153. 

3 Statutes of the Realm, i. 223. 

4 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. lxviii. 

6 Clark, in Eng. Hist. Review, xix. 716. 
8 See Vinogradoff, Villainage, 66. 

7 Mirror of Justices, 39. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 79 

was nowhere any attempt to put lepers in tithings, for it was 
the duty of the jurors in the local police jurisdictions promptly 
to present the names of such persons that they might be segre- 
gated ; * and it is equally clear that English law in this period 
recognized the disabilities both of the idiot and of the lunatic, 
and gave suitable excuses to those infirm in body. As for deaf 
mutes one cannot be so sure ; but in rural districts they were per- 
haps so few in number that the question would not often arise. 
Besides those who were not required to be members of tithings 
because of rank, order, property, or disability, there was one 
other class of the population not generally in frankpledge, — 
those, namely, who were in the mainpast or personal pledge of 
some one individual. The law of mainpast can in its essential 
features easily be traced back through the laws of Canute and 
Ethelred, which held the lord responsible for the men of his 
household, to the law of Edmund requiring every man to pledge 
the good conduct of those whom he maintained and lodged, 
and ultimately to the Kentish law of the late seventh century, 
which made the host a similar pledge for the stranger whom 
he received for more than three nights. These provisions, 
with some new details, were carried over bodily by the law 
books of the twelfth century. 2 Bracton makes a man's main- 
past consist, first, of his folgheres ("followers"), who, if accused 
of any charge while in his service, can be legally dismissed by 
him only after they are purged of crime; and, secondly, of the 
household which he supplies with food and clothing, or which 
he virtually supplies with food through wages, such as the 
domestics or the servingmen and hirelings of his family. To 
these he also adds persons entertained in the house, following 

1 Maitland, Court Baron, 134. 

3 Leges Henrici, viii. 2-5, xli. 7-8, Ixvi. 7, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554, 
568, 586; Leis Willelme, Hi, and Pseudo-Ingulf version, xlviii, ibid. 519; Leges 
Edw. Con/., xxi, xxiii, ibid. 647, 648. See above, pp. 16, 20. 



80 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

the old Anglo-Saxon rule, brought over into Norman times, 
which held that the first night the traveller was to be regarded 
as a stranger, the second night as a guest, the third as a member 
of the household. 1 Finally, he says that any man might receive 
another into his mainpast if the other so desired, but that, 
pending investigation of an accusation against the person re- 
ceived, neither the surety nor the one pledged was to withdraw 
from the arrangement after it was once made any more than 
one might withdraw from his tithing. 2 It will be remembered 
that Bracton calls this manner of pledging francum plegium 
alicuius, in opposition to decenna or tithing suretyship. 

The word mainpast (manupastus) is but a Latin version of 
the Anglo-Saxon hlafeatan, loaf-eaters. In the strict sense of 
the term, then, the mainpast of the head of a household are 
"those whom his hand feeds," 3 — not only servants and re- 
tainers, but all other members of his household as well. There 
seems to be every reason for thinking, however, that the law of 
mainpast as stated by Bracton is substantially the same as that 
followed prior to the Norman Conquest. Evidences of a tend- 
ency to consider the members of the family under this form of 
suretyship appear at a comparatively late date. The son is 
sometimes found to be in the mainpast of his father, 4 or the 
younger brother in that of the older ; 5 but it seems to be only 
when the father or the brother is a man of standing, for in one 
case a father is fined for failure to have his son put in frank- 
pledge. 6 The close analogy which Bracton draws between the 

1 Leges Henrici, viii. 5, and Leges Edw. Con/., xxiii, in Liebermann, 
Gesetze, i. 554, 648. 

2 Bracton, fol. 124&, ii. 306-309. See also Britton, i. 49. 

3 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), *■ 555- 

4 As in Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 248 (a. d. 1243). 

5 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 101. 

6 Maitland, Court Baron, 72. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 81 

two kinds of pledging seems to indicate that no householder 
would be held responsible for pledging any one who was too 
young to be put in frankpledge, but that responsibility in the 
two systems began at the same age. 

The theory that women were to be considered in mainpast is 
presented only at the end of the thirteenth century, and then 
apparently to explain the fact that they never had been, and 
obviously never could be, put in tithings. 1 Britton regarded the 
exemption of women as universal, assigning as a reason for the 
law that a woman could not be outlawed the fact that she could 
not be appointed to any tithing. 2 Earlier writers had tacitly 
taken this exception for granted; Britton accounted for it on 
the assumption that women were in the mainpast of some male 
relative. 3 It is evident, however, that this theory was not strictly 
applied by the courts. In 1302 one woman, probably a widow of 
some property, was so far free from the tutelage of any male 
relative that she was recognized as holding in her own mainpast 
a son whom she was bringing up at home. 4 Even when a woman 
criminal was waived, 5 it does not appear that any individual was 
fined for failure to produce her in court. 

As already observed, clerics were not expected to be under 
suretyship. In the time of Henry II the head of a religious order 
is mentioned as holding the members in his mainpast : grants to 
the abbey of St. George of Bocherville in Normandy and to 

1 The Mirror of Justices says in one passage (ch. xvii, pp. 39, 41) that women 
are not exempt; but in view of the well-known inaccuracy of the work this as- 
sertion seems to have been made for purposes of euphony, and may have been 
influenced by the fact that women were often in attendance at the view of frank- 
pledge. The entry "non fuit in decenna quia mulier" is of frequent occurrence 
in assize rolls for the time of Edward I. 

2 Britton, i. 50, 181. 

3 Ibid. 49. 

4 Year Book, 30-31 Edw. I, 203. 

6 A woman could not be outlawed. 

6 



82 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

three abbeys in England are made in each case "to the abbot 
and his mainpast." x These entries probably refer to mainpast 
merely in the sense of a household, with no idea that the abbot 
was responsible for producing his monks in court; but in the 
thirteenth century priors and abbots were regularly amerced for 
not producing men of their mainpast. 2 

Of the members of the household who were in mainpast, 
those not of the family were far the more likely to need surety- 
ship. It is these persons to whom the attention of law-writers 
and law-makers is chiefly directed, and it is likewise this class 
in mainpast which appears oftenest in the records of criminal 
courts. The requirement that strangers were to be regarded as 
in the suretyship of the head of the house in which they were 
received for three nights or more shows that they were looked 
upon with real suspicion. There was, indeed, a great deal of 
crime committed by vagrants who were not in suretyship of any 
kind. If, therefore, such persons became members of a com- 
munity it was very essential that they be under some sort of 
pledge ; and from as far back as there is any written English law 
mainpast had been the form provided for them. Before they 
could be compelled to enroll in a tithing they had to be in resi- 
dence in the community a year and a day. In 1166 Henry II 
deemed it essential for the maintenance of the public peace 
strictly to reiterate for towns and boroughs the old law requiring 
those who received such strangers in house or on land to take 
them in rnanu to have them before the justices if required. 3 Ten 
years later he made more stringent still the conditions under 
which travellers might be received, by requiring that no one, in 
either borough or vill, should entertain a stranger in his house for 

1 Dugdale, Monasticon, vi. pt. ii. 1067. 

2 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, iv. 211, 214. 

3 Assize of Clarendon, ch. x, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 83 

more than one night without reasonable excuse, unless he were 
willing to have the person in court. Furthermore, when the 
traveller left it must be by day and in the presence of the neigh- 
bors. 1 More than a century later, according to Britton, it was 
the duty of the jury at the view of frankpledge to present not 
only the names of persons above the age of twelve and not of 
the exempt classes who were out of tithing, but also the names 
of their receivers and of those who had them in mainpast, as 
well as "of vagrants through the country who are not of any 
one's mainpast, and are of suspicious character." 2 The writer 
of the Mirror of Justices would excuse from frankpledge only 
foreigners who are "messengers, pilgrims, or merchants," 3 a 
fact which shows a disposition to grant no indulgence to vagrants. 
The greater part of those in mainpast who were likely to be 
troublesome were, however, domestics and persons serving in a 
household for wages. Although Bracton elsewhere lays down 
the rule of responsibility for all whom a man receives into his 
house or whom by special arrangement he takes into his main- 
past, yet he carefully repeats the old provision in the later edi- 
tion of the Leges Edwardi, that episcopal and lay magnates, 
to whom he adds persons with regalian liberties, shall be re- 
sponsible for leading to justice not only their knights, but also 
their squires and servants, such as stewards, butlers, chamber- 
lains, cooks, and bakers. 4 If these are not produced when 
required, their master must pay a forfeit. The words that fol- 
low, "so shall it be observed concerning all who are of any one's 
mainpast," show the care taken by the writer to make it clear 
that such responsibility was fixed on the heads of both great and 

1 Assize of Northampton, ch. ii, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 151. 

2 Britton, i. 181. 

3 Mirror, 41. Those "in ward" are also exempted here; but ward is only 
the name for frankpledge in cities and towns of importance. 

4 Fol. 1246, ii. 306. Fleta (p. 40) also repeats this law. 



84 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

small households. To this general law of mainpast there might, 
however, as Bracton goes on to show, be some modification 
according to local custom. In 1221, for example, a justice in 
eyre had recognized a rule in the county of Hertford according 
to which no man was responsible for a default on the part of his 
mainpast unless subsequently to the latter's felony or flight he 
had received him again into his house ; 1 but this rule was an 
exception to the general practice in other counties at about the 
same time, 2 as well -as both earlier 3 and later. Some idea of the 
exact strictness with which the law of mainpast was ordinarily 
enforced may be gained from the case of a certain Roger Barel, 
a resident of the county of Somerset, who in 1243 was declared 
"at mercy-' by the justices in eyre for not producing one 
Nicholas, a man in his mainpast, who had fled after burning 
Roger's own house. 4 

Bearing in mind exemptions made on account of rank, order, 
property, disability, or connection with a responsible house- 
holder, one may say that persons of all other classes were in 
frankpledge. These constituted the great body of Englishmen be- 
low the rank of nobility or of knighthood who were neither clerks 
nor freeholders. To be exact, however, it is necessary to include 
in tithing part of the mainpast class ; for persons in mainpast in 
one place might be in frankpledge elsewhere. Thus, in some 
boroughs the close connection of the servant class with the town 
industries led to their inclusion in its general system of police 
suretyship. 5 Ordinarily this would happen also when strangers 



1 Bracton, ii. 304. According to one manuscript it was in Hereford. 

2 See, for example, Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 185 ; 
Salt Archaeol Soc, Collections, iv. 214. 

3 Pipe Rolls, 12 Hen. II, 66 (Rutland), and 21 Hen. II, 194 (Hants). 

4 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 299. 

6 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. lxvi; Bateson, Records of Leicester, 
»• 153. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 85 

or temporary sojourners were received in mainpast; for their 
tithing membership at home was likely to be retained, though 
doubtless often unknown to those who temporarily acted as their 
pledges. A resident of another county was apparently not put 
in tithing when he was known to live elsewhere ; * in London 
the principle was distinctly enunciated that a man could have 
responsibility to but one tithing at a time. 2 Nor was one required 
to be in a tithing if one was in ward in a borough, for the two 
situations amounted to the same thing. A temporary sojourner 
was pledged only by coming into some one's mainpast. In cases 
in which both mainpast and frankpledge arrangements were 
effected in places near enough together to be within reach of the 
same itinerant justices, a head of a household to which a man 
joined himself was sometimes amerced on his account, and the 
vill where he was, or should have been, in frankpledge was like- 
wise amerced for the same default. 3 Outside the boroughs 
mainpast and frankpledge were in general mutually exclusive; 
hence these exceptional cases, being confined to travellers, were 
comparatively rare. 

That a large part of the population of England south of the 
Trent and east of Hereford and Shropshire was in tithing there 
can be little doubt. Aside from the exemptions mentioned by 
writers of the thirteenth century, practically all of the villains 
were held subject to the obligations and duties of frankpledge. 
There seems to be some reason for supposing that in the time of 
Edward I this class of peasants comprised two-thirds of the 
whole English population ; 4 but it is to be remembered that the 
system also embraced some rural freemen, and that it was en- 

1 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 255, 272. 

2 Mirror of Justices, 39; also p. 41, where it is said that those in ward are 
exempt from any other tithing duty. 

3 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 269. 

4 Cheyney, in Eng. Hist. Review, xv. 20. 



86 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

forced in many boroughs, including the most populous English 
communities, where servitude did not exist. Moreover, although 
it would appear that in general only villains were in frankpledge 
at the beginning of the fourteenth century, this was probably 
not true at an earlier time. At any rate, the law as stated by 
Bracton would have required the putting in frankpledge of many 
rural freemen without property enough to serve as surety for 
their good behavior. If one accepts the most extreme assertion 
that it is possible to find in Bracton, and understands it as exempt- 
ing all freemen, one must still bear in mind that even this rule 
was varied by local usage, 1 that in some rural as well as urban 
communities men of free status were undoubtedly in frank- 
pledge, and that travellers who were in frankpledge at home 
could hardly have been villains. 2 

The frankpledge unit, the tithing, which claimed a part in 
the activities of so many persons, is variously designated in the 
records under the names decenna, franc pie gium, fridborg, tedinga, 
and thethinga, but after the twelfth century usually as decenna or 
tedinga. In the southeast, especially in Kent, it is called a borg 
or borgha; 3 in the pipe rolls of Henry II for Berkshire occurs 
one reference to the institution under the name of borgus? 

The number of men in a frankpledge tithing undoubtedly 
tended to increase between the beginning of the twelfth and the 
end of the thirteenth century, for the theoretical number is 
greater in the reign of Edward I than in that of Henry I. The 
old traditional number in a tithing was ten, a good round figure 
probably borrowed by the early Norman practice from the 
Saxon tithing of Canute, but in any event to be found even 

1 See above, p. 77. 

2 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 272. 

3 "Necfuitin Borgha quia extraneus": Public Record Office, Assize Roll, 
No. 376, m. 2b. 

4 Pipe Roll, 23 Hen. II, 49. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 87 

earlier in the London frithgild tithing of Athelstan's time. So 
strong was this tradition that prior to the thirteenth century it 
had fixed upon the tithing and the tithingman respectively the 
names decenna and decennarius, by which they were to be known 
permanently in law Latin, and had in some cases caused the 
frankpledge system to be designated as "decennial suretyship" 
(fideiussio decennalis) and the tithing as a decimatio. 1 All this 
seems to indicate that the Saxon tithing included ten at least, 
and that in the time of Henry I there was an effort to maintain 
the frankpledge tithing at that number as a minimum. To keep 
the tithing intact was one of the objects of the two special hun- 
dred courts held yearly at the later period. 2 

The fact that the frankpledge population of a whole vill or 
manor often constituted a tithing shows that, although ten was 
probably the minimum, the actual number of members must 
have varied considerably. The requirement of the Magna 
Carta of 1217, and of subsequent reissues, that "the tithing be 
kept entire as was wont," 3 seems to have been designed to 
maintain a minimum size of tithing no less than to keep up the 
tithing organization. Before the last of the reissues by Edward I 
the tithing appears to have contained more than ten. In the 
thirteenth century it was sometimes, especially by the jurists 
who wrote in French during the reign of Edward I, called a 
dozen (douzaine, duodena) and its members dozeners, 4 a group- 

1 Leges Edw. Conf, xx. 1, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 645; Liebermann, Con- 
siliatio Cnuti, 13. 

2 Leges Henrici, viii. 1, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554; Schmid, Gesetze, 441. 

3 Magna Carta of 1217, ch. xlii, Statutes of the Realm, i. 17-19; reissues of 
1225 and 1245, ibid. 24, 31; reissue of 1297, ch. xxv, ibid. 118. 

4 See Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edw. Conf., 30 (note 9), 78; Vinogradoff, 
Villainage, 363, note 4; Britton, i. 48; Mirror of Justices, 39, where dozeine and 
diseine are the forms used. Maitland shows that the statement of the Leges 
Edwardi, ch. xx, is against the assumption that a tithing has always been a 
tenth of a long hundred. He suggests (Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxix, 



88 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

ing by twelves which, as already observed, 1 was probably due 
to a revival of Saxon precedents. 

The early thirteenth-century assertion that a tithing contained 
ten, twenty, or thirty according to local custom, 2 shows a diver- 
sity in practice made necessary by the fact that in Kent and the 
shires of the old West Saxon kingdom the prevailing usage was 
for the men of a whole township or district to form a single 
tithing. 3 In these parts of England the number in tithing thus 
usually depended on the number of residents of the class that 
was subject to the frankpledge obligation. In the boroughs 
where frankpledge existed, the tithings, or the wards that some- 
times served in their places, were groups also founded on terri- 
torial divisions. 4 Though the personal basis of the tithing 
continued to be maintained in most places, yet there are tithing- 
lists of both town and country which show, instead of the capital 
pledge with the traditional nine other pledges, a capital pledge 
with sometimes from twenty to twenty-five others. 5 In tithing- 
lists of the fourteenth century there seems to be no change in 
numbers on account of either increase or decrease in popula- 
tion. One tithing was not incorporated with others as soon as 
it numbered less than twelve or even less than ten. About the 
beginning of the fifteenth century one rural place had on its 
tithing-lists capital pledges with eight or nine, or even with two 

note 4) that the word which Bracton writes dozeine is formed from the Latin 
decena by the intermediation of such a form as deciona; but this etymological 
change could hardly have altered the plain reading of the law without the pre- 
cedent in Anglo-Saxon custom that has been suggested elsewhere in this study. 

1 See above, pp. 21, 28-29. 

2 A gloss on the Holkham MSS. (Liebermann, Consiliatio Cnuti, 13). 
This corrects Palgrave's version (Commonwealth, ii. p. cxxv, note 34), which is 
obviously wrong in giving the number of members as ten, seventy, or eighty. 

3 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, p. xxx. 

4 Bateson, Records of Leicester, i. pp. xlix, 365 ; Kitchin, Charter to St. 
Giles Fair, 34. 

5 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. 1. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 89 

or three, associates ; and as these died or moved away or gained 
exemption from frankpledge their names were crossed out, till 
the capital pledge sometimes stood alone on the list. 1 Such a 
condition, however, so clearly indicates the decadence of frank- 
pledge that one is hardly justified in assuming its existence at 
a much earlier time. In an Essex tithing in 1428 there were 
still fourteen pledges besides the two capital ones. 2 

In referring officially to a tithing different modes of designa- 
tion were followed. In rare cases the group was mentioned as 
the tithing of such or such a fugitive member ; 3 but ordinarily 
two other forms of reference were used. As early as the reign 
of Henry II the tithing either was named for its head man, or 
else, if there was but one frankpledge association for a vill or 
district, it bore the name of that district. Thus one of the earliest 
frankpledge entries in the pipe rolls mentions "the tithing of 
Ralph Smith," 4 a form usually, though not always, followed 
in the east and midlands and sometimes in the west and south. 
Reference to "the tithing of Lasham " in Hampshire at a little 
later period shows the form of nomenclature used more or less in 
the regions where the territorial tithing still existed, 5 — namely, 
in the counties south of the Thames, in the county of Gloucester, 
and less frequently in the counties of Warwick, Worcester, and 
Stafford. 6 Its use elsewhere seems to have been due to the fact 
that a vill was small and had but one personal tithing, rather 

1 Harston in Cambridgeshire. See Appendix C, below. 
8 Young, Dulwich College, ii. 285. 

3 Pipe Roll, 16 Hen. II, 148, 149; Rot. Cur. Regis (ed. Palgrave), i. 203, 207; 
Turner, Select Pleas of the Forest, 1. 

4 Pipe Roll, 12 Hen. II, 129 (Essex and Hereford). 

5 Ibid. 21 Hen. II, 194. 

6 "Tithing of Esse of the Prior of Tanton " (Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 23) ; 
"tithing of the Hospital of Perton " (ibid. 298). It is sometimes considered 
necessary to give the name of the tithingman in addition to that of the place. 
See, for example, ibid. 46, 50, 272. 



90 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

than to any general policy of making tithings follow territorial 
lines. In other words, " tithing " was in the south and west a 
designation for a district and also for the frankpledge organiza- 
tion of its inhabitants; whereas in the other frankpledge counties 
the vill was the district, and the tithing its inhabitants of a given 
frankpledge group. 1 

The duties of the frankpledge tithing may be classified under 
three heads, — those resulting from its borh character, those 
springing from its nature considered purely as a tithing, and 
those incidental to its general relation to the police jurisdiction. 
These duties were discharged under the direction of a capital 
pledge, who in many cases came to represent the whole tithing. 
For refusal of due obedience to him, especially in the matter 
of financial contribution, a tithing was subject to amercement. 2 

Like the Saxon borh, the frankpledge friborg was a pledge for 
the appearance of its members in court. Though this pledging 
was technical and compulsory, it was spoken of in the same 
language as the obligation of the mainpernor who of his own 
will bailed a man out of custody and became surety for his 
appearance at the proper time. According to the records sub- 
sequent to 1166, if the individual escaped, or for any other 
reason was not produced when he should be, his pledge, whether 
an individual or a tithing, was subject to amercement by the 
justices in eyre "for not having the person who was pledged." 3 

1 See Palgrave, Commonwealth, i. 198. Healey (Somersetshire Pleas, p. xxx) 
holds that the word tithing in the shires of old Wessex had no territorial signifi- 
cation when used with reference to frankpledge ; but since, as he himself shows, 
the frankpledge tithing included the men of the territorial tithing, it seems cor- 
rect to say that the former was territorial as well as personal. 

2 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 169; Dugdale, Monasticon, 
ii. 83. 

3 See, for example, Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, i. 78; also Pipe Roll, 
22 Hen. II, 167. Cf. Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 98-101 (a. d. 1225); also 
Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, Nos. 118-119, 123-125, 130-133. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 91 

The theory of the law held by the writer of the Leges Edwardi 
was that the tithing which failed to produce an accused member 
was not only liable to a fine for default of this duty, but was also 
responsible for making good whatever damage he had done, 
unless the head man and two other members could establish 
the tithing' s innocence of complicity in the crime and flight by 
their own oath and that of nine others (the capital pledge and the 
two leading men of each of three neighboring tithings). 1 This 
probably never was an actual legal rule, certainly not later 
than the early twelfth century. After 11 66, the date at 
which these matters begin to be systematically recorded, the ac- 
cusation against a tithing in such a case is no longer subjected to 
the compurgatory process, but is tendered by a regular present- 
ment jury of twelve. The direct liability of a tithing in the mat- 
ter of a flight appears only in its amercement for failure to 
produce delinquent members. 

In the event of flight for a crime, the question to what tithing 
the criminal belonged became one of the points of inquest 
touching the case, in order that liability for his flight might be 
fixed. In the thirteenth century the coroner was required to 
look into this question carefully when holding the customary 
inquest of his office in the investigation of violent deaths, and 
to report to the justices, among other matters, to what tithing 
a fugitive criminal belonged, or, if the man was not in frank- 
pledge but was of the class that should be thus pledged, in what 
vill he had been received. In the former case, even though the 
fugitive was taken by others and brought to prison, his tithing 
was fined for not producing him unless it bailed him from 
prison and presented him at the proper time. In the latter case 
the vill was amerced for receiving a man out of frankpledge. 2 

1 Leges Edw. Conf., xx. 3, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 646. See Pollock and 
Maitland, English Law (1895), "• 53°> note. 

2 Bracton, fol. 124&, ii. 304. 



92 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

The amount paid by the surety in cases of escape was, ac- 
cording to Anglo-Saxon law and the twelfth-century leges, at 
least equivalent to the wergeld of the fugitive. 1 In actual prac- 
tice, from the time of Henry II to that of Edward I the amount 
exacted from the pledge of an escaped criminal was usually 
half a mark, whether the suretyship was that of the lord for his 
mainpast, the tithing for its member, or the mainpernor for the 
person bailed from custody. Larger sums were occasionally 
paid, especially when the suretyship was of the last-named 
variety (which was often employed), or when the offender was 
a man of rank or standing. When the justices in eyre first 
undertook the systematic enforcement of the frankpledge obli- 
gation in 1 1 66 they collected thirty shillings, two marks, or 
even forty shillings. 2 Such sums were sometimes exacted at a 
later time; but by 1175 it seems to have been the rule to de- 
mand half a mark as the price of an evasion of justice by a man 
of the frankpledge or the mainpast class. 3 This mitigation of 
the severity of the law apparently came as the result of a delib- 
erate policy to make exactions upon men of the lower classes 
proportionate to their ability to pay, for it is paralleled in the 
collection of the murder fine from the hundred. 4 If a suspect 
fled from fear and his innocence was established, he was allowed 
to return; but it does not appear that the amercement of the 
tithing for his flight was remitted. The liability was just the 

1 Leges Henrici, viii. 2, xli. 8, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554, 568; Lets 
Willelme, iii. i, 2, 5, ibid. 495-496. 
3 Pipe Roll, 12 Hen. II, 108. 

3 See, for example, ibid. 22 Hen. II, 167. Cf. Healey, Somersetshire 
Pleas, 98-101, 234; Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, Nos. 118-119, 
130-133; Gesta Abbat. Monast. S. Albani (Rolls Series), iii. 63-64. 

4 According to the writers of the early twelfth century, this fine, when first 
demanded by the Norman kings, was forty-six marks; but the pipe roll of the 
thirty-first year of Henry I, and similar rolls of Henry II, show that only four, 
five, or six marks were usually collected. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 03 

same when the culprit found sanctuary and abjured the realm. 
Even if he was captured by others and delivered to prison, 
the tithing was still amerciable because it had not itself cap- 
tured and produced him. 1 

Obligation to produce at trial involved not only the paying 
for the escape of men in tithing but also the custody of captured 
criminals till the next session of the trial court. In those days, 
when the castles were the prisons, the cost of imprisonment was 
usually to be met by the prisoner ; moreover, since such a source 
of income as exactions upon this pretext afforded was not to be 
overlooked by bailiffs of castles, an amount was often charged 
for putting a man under bail. For imprisoning men of the 
peasant class, however, who were unable to make such pay- 
ments, there was not the same motive. In such cases, unless 
the offence were particularly heinous, the man's tithing was 
charged with his custody after he had been brought before the 
keeper of a prison or some other official. 2 As late as 1340 the 
tithing performed an analogous function in manorial affairs 
by taking into custody, until an accounting was rendered, the 
manorial reeve who had ill tithed the goods of the lord to the 
damage of the rector. 3 The justices in eyre followed the rule 
that, if a man had been attached by his own tithing and did not 
appear in court, his tithing associates were responsible and 
were to be amerced. In 1221 it is recorded that a man taken 
on the appeal of an approver of Bristol was committed to the tith- 
ing of the vill of Tetbury. 4 On the lands of the prior of Brooke 
in Kent the borhsealdor and his borg were required to lead 
to the hundred of Wye any extraneus thief attached, as well 

1 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 260-262; Bracton, fol. 124&, ii. 304. 

2 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 37; Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, 
No. 241. 

3 Maitland, Court Baron, 105. 

4 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 227. 



94 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

as any man of the tenement of Brooke who was arrested for 
theft. 1 

The necessity of guarding a neighbor apprehended for 
crime, who was likely to escape at any time and subject his cus- 
todians to a fine, was bad enough, and the obligation of making 
the journey with him to the hundred or the county court added 
materially to the burden; but, worse still, a tithing might be 
required to produce an erring member before the court at West- 
minster. At the Trinity term of the coram rege court in 1220 
a man appealed of robbery by an approver at Windsor was 
committed to the custody of Peter Miller of Eton and his 
tithing "to have at summons." 2 But Windsor was no great 
distance from London; and the tithing near by was probably 
made up of men of the royal domain who would be accounted 
for on their journeys to London by royal officials, as may have 
been the case with Peter Miller, the head man. The perform- 
ance of such police duty by a tithing of poor rustics in a com- 
munity farther away would, however, doubtless have been 
impossible; for a tithing consisting mainly of serfs must have 
offered too many chances for their escape from the manor. 

The custody obligation of the tithing, as just shown by the 
case of the extraneus thief, might be assumed when the person 
replevied was not one of the associates of the group. The 
tithing might also, like any individual, bail a man from prison, 3 
such action being theoretically voluntary on its part. A man in 
one tithing was sometimes thus bailed by another tithing in 
conjunction with his own ; 4 and occasionally a man guilty of 
homicide who sought sanctuary came from the church into 

1 Scargill-Bird, Custumals of Battle Abbey (Camden Soc), 136. 

2 Bractoti's Note Book, iii. 379. 

8 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester , No. 269. 
4 Ibid. No. 264. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 95 

the custody of two tithings. 1 In an age when the sheriff or over- 
lord was given to the exaction of considerable sums of money 
from the tithing on various illegal pretexts, there must have 
been frequent temptation to burden it with the custody of ac- 
cused criminals on the assumption that such obligation was 
voluntarily assumed. In 1221, for example, a man guilty of 
causing a death was committed by precept of the justices to a 
Gloucestershire tithing for the payment of one mark, an amount 
which in some cases could hardly have failed to be a consider- 
ation for putting a man in charge of a tithing to which he had 
never belonged. Moreover, it was not always possible to in- 
carcerate a criminal in a castle in the regular way. During the 
Barons' War, following the death of John, William Marshal the 
regent had such need of the fortifications at Gloucester Castle 
that he would permit no one to be imprisoned there. For this 
reason a man accused of homicide was committed to a tithing 
to be had before the justices; but in extenuation of this pro- 
ceeding it is recorded that no one spoke against the accused. 2 
Sometimes the townsmen themselves prevented the incarcera- 
tion of a prisoner in their castle, and so left the tithing still 
responsible. 3 

When police duty was wrongfully laid upon a tithing, its 
members, who were of lowly station, could hardly risk with- 
standing the great personage, perhaps a royal favorite, who 
demanded it. In the hundred rolls there is a complaint that the 
prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, took of the borg of Adi- 
sham four pounds for the escape of a certain robber, and that 
the justices in eyre further amerced the borg a hundred shillings 
for the same default of duty ; likewise that the same prior took 
of the borg of " La Leye " 4 a hundred shillings under similar 

1 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 315. 

2 Ibid. No. 419. 3 Rot. Hundred., i. 181. 4 The modern Leigh? 



96 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

circumstances, although the case was one which belonged to the 
king alone, and that the royal bailiff of the same borg collected 
three shillings more on the same score. 1 At an earlier time the 
notorious Engelard de Cigony exacted a hundred shillings from 
the tithing of the vill of Tetbury in Gloucestershire for the 
escape of an accused criminal who had been committed to its 
custody. 2 

The great increase in the number of duties of the borh tithing 
as early as 1220 did not diminish the number of those which 
it performed as a tithing proper. Just as the Saxon tithing of 
Edgar pursued and captured thieves, so the frankpledge tithing, 
at least from the time of Henry I, acted in a similar capacity. 
Even if one of the associates of the Saxon borh committed a 
crime, the others who were responsible for his appearance at 
trial had to capture him and take him into custody or else pay 
a fine. When the borh and the tithing were consolidated in frank- 
pledge, the tithing not only continued to make arrests in such 
cases, but retained its former general police competence as well, 
as may be gathered from what has been said in regard to the 
custody obligation of the tithing; for in the ordinary course of 
events the criminal would naturally be handed over to the 
tithing that arrested him. But more substantial proofs on this 
point are not wanting. The pipe rolls of Henry II and his two 
sons show clearly enough that the tithing made arrests; but 
whether or not it apprehended persons other than its own mem- 
bers is a question to which the extreme brevity of these records 
gives no direct answer. It is significant, however, that, as soon 
as court records are sufficiently explicit to afford any definite 
information, one finds the tithing, like its Anglo-Saxon proto- 
type, making arrests in all sorts of cases, raising the hue and 

1 Rot. Hundred., i. 205. 

2 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 227. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 97 

cry, 1 and pursuing the offender in force. When the hue was 
raised anywhere in a vill, all its residents, whether in frankpledge 
or not, were expected to join in the pursuit. Thus it frequently 
happened throughout England that a whole vill was fined for 
failure to do its duty in such cases, 2 or that a tithing was assisted 
in taking a criminal by other residents of the vill. 3 

As a rule, in the Gloucester pleas of 1221 the tithing is found 
making arrests which a peace officer would ordinarily be ex- 
pected to make. 4 Moreover, the finders of a dead body, and in 
some cases the witnesses of a violent or an accidental death, — 
persons who were presumed to be under suspicion of causing 
such death until their innocence was established in case they 
did not voluntarily appear, — were in various instances attached 
and brought to the inquest by a tithing sent for that purpose, 5 
probably at the direction of the coroner. To secure the ap- 
pearance in court of an important witness, a tithing might be 
charged with the duty of bringing before the justices a person 
who had raised the hue. 6 When five brothers of the well-known 
Basset family were appealed for causing the death of a neigh- 
bor, two tithings were sent to take them, and clearly by order 
of the sheriff or the justices, for the case had already been set- 
tled between the Bassets and the widow of the deceased. 7 An 
instance in which the justices gave orders for custody by a 
tithing has already been noticed. 8 This activity of the tithing 

1 Maitland, Select Pleas of the Crown, No. 36 (Lincolnshire eyre, A. D. 1202). 

2 As, for example, in Maitland's Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, p. 126. 

3 Ibid. No. 404. 

4 Ibid. Nos. 21, 280. Page 119 of Maitland's work shows that the former 
of these territorial tithings actually served as a frankpledge tithing as well. 

6 Ibid. Nos. 84, 135, 153, 221, 280, 282, 444; Maitland, Select Pleas of the 
Crown, Nos. 108, 127. 

6 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 383. 

7 Ibid. No. 101, and note. 

8 Above, p. 93. 

7 



98 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

under the eyes of royal peace officers who directed its move- 
ments seems to be another feature which links it to the tithing 
of Edgar under the control of the hundredman. In fact, the 
frankpledge tithing is to be found under the supervision of the 
royal bailiff also, at one time attending him when he is making 
an arrest/ at another mulcted by him for dereliction of duty. 2 
By a charter of Edward III to St. Giles Fair, Winchester, in 
1349, tithingmen and tithings were put under the direction 
of aldermen for the attaching of transgressors against the law 
and customs of the fair. 3 

Subordination to the local peace authorities, and frequent 
attendance at criminal trials, brought upon the tithing a third 
set of duties of a police nature which were distinct from any 
known to have belonged to either the Saxon borh or the Saxon 
tithing. These duties were especially prominent in the south 
of England, where the tithings, following territorial lines as 
they did, were likely to be numerically greater than elsewhere, 
and to include most of the men of a given community who would 
be present on such occasions. A tithing also, whether willingly 
or not, often performed functions connected with medieval 
English justice which were usually or occasionally executed by 
a number of individuals, the community in this way assuming 
corporate liability in place of the joint obligation of a few in- 
dividuals. This was true in the south of England particularly. 
Under the general summons to the eyre, the various tithings 
seem to have been expected to appear before the justices to 
assist in making presentments of crimes or to give testimony in 
trials of offences, as well as to lead to trial criminals under their 
custody. A special privilege enjoyed by the men of Kent and 

1 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 30. 

2 Rot. Hundred., i. 205. 

3 Kitchin, Charter to St. Giles Fair, 34. In this case the aldermen were 
officers of the bishop. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 99 

recorded before the justices in 1293 was a provision exempting 
gavelkinders from responding generally to this summons and 
permitting them to appear only by the borhsealdor and four men 
of the borgh, except in the towns that answered by twelve men. 1 
Such regular attendance of the tithing favored corporate 
action in the performing of court duty. Thus, a tithing some- 
times acted as pledge for the prosecution of a case, 2 and paid 
the fine in the usual way when the cause turned out to be a bad 
one or when the prosecution was not regularly conducted. In 
some cases, as we have seen, it bailed a man from prison like 
an ordinary mainpernor; in others it stood as pledge for the 
payment of an amercement imposed upon some person, or 
even as pledge in the event of wager of law by the ordeal of hot 
iron. 3 A tithing might also act as suit to bear witness to a ques- 
tion of fact. Such an instance occurred in Somerset in 1225, 
when a tithing, along with twelve jurors, testified that the 
bailiff of the hundred told the truth in asserting that a certain 
man accused of causing a death confessed his guilt when first 
taken. 4 In a forest plea four tithings sometimes acted as main- 
pernors of a vill in which a dead deer had been found, and 
which accordingly had to clear itself from the accusation of 
poaching. 5 The chattels of a fugitive from justice, the booty 
dropped by robbers in their flight, or the deodand found near 
the dead, — things usually given into the keeping of the town- 
ship or the sheriff or some other responsible person to be brought 
before the justices in eyre for confiscation, — were in the south 
of England turned over to a tithing involved in the case. 6 For 

1 Statutes of the Realm, i. 223. 

2 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, Nos. 114, 116. 

3 Maitland, Select Pleas of the Crown, No. 24 (Lincolnshire, A. D. 1202). 

4 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 50. 

6 Turner, Select Pleas of the Forest, 71-72 (Essex, A. d. 1240-1241). 

6 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, Nos. 89, 147, 419; Healey, 



ioo THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

neglect in producing the contraband articles at the proper time 
the tithing was amerced, just as the sheriff was fined for a similar 
fault. If it fell to the tithingman and the men of the township 
under his supervision to appraise the value of such goods, — 
and this would often be their duty in case they had appropriated 
or had forgotten to bring the chattels, — they were liable to 
another amercement if the justices believed that they had not 
set a sufficiently high value on what had been committed to their 
keeping. 1 Likewise, if they told an untruth about anything be- 
fore the justices they were subjected to further amercement. 2 

All these miscellaneous duties connected with the regular 
justice of the kingdom the tithing performed in the thirteenth 
century. At the same period the frankpledge group was also 
burdened with some special obligations in the manorial leet and 
the sheriff's tourn. In 1227 entire tithings, under-pledges as 
well as capital ones, were required to make tri- weekly suit at a 
hundred court held by the bishop of Salisbury ; 3 and even at 
the beginning of the fourteenth century the capital pledge in 
some cases performed a similar function at hundred courts. 4 
Often a manorial tithing, one of whose number did not appear 
at the view of frankpledge as required, was ordered to produce 
the delinquent at the next view. 5 Tithings likewise acted as 

Somersetshire Pleas, 246. That in the south and west this was often a real 
frankpledge, not merely a territorial, tithing is indicated by the following entry : 
"Gilo del Maine occidit Petrum de la Mote dominum suum et fugit . . . tunica 
ipsius Gilonis commissa fuit Decenne villate de Kinemereford habenda coram 
justiciariis " (Maitland, Pleas for Gloucester, No. 147). Compare "in franco 
plegio villate de Wudecestria" (ibid. No. 224). According to Assize Roll, No. 60, 
m. 22b (A. d. 1272), a tithing in Buckinghamshire, probably a mere frank- 
pledge group, accounts for the chattels of two men who have been imprisoned. 

1 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 267. 

2 Ibid. 37. 

3 Bracton's Note Book, ii. 195. 

4 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, v. pt. i. 87. 

5 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 94. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 101 

manucaptors, till the next court was held, for freemen as well as 
for bondmen who were presented in manorial courts for various 
defaults and were not there. 1 Such service, presupposing a 
general attendance of the tithing, was required well down into 
the fourteenth century. 2 On Berkshire manors, it is said, the 
whole tithing attended the view of frankpledge in 1441, and even 
as late as 1480; 3 but this probably means only that it had to be 
represented by the tithingman and perhaps four others at most. 
One reason for the requirement of such attendance was that 
the tithing frequently made presentments of infractions of 
manorial usage. 4 More than this, it was often required to 
bring a certain sum of money with it to the view of frankpledge. 
In the south of England in the fifteenth century this was called 
"cert money." Given in the latter part of the thirteenth cen- 
tury nominally as a freewill offering of the tithing, and presented 
by the tithingman for meeting the expense of holding the "law 
day," 5 it later became a fixed payment, and often included a 
certain number of quarters of wheat in addition to the pence ren- 
dered as cert money proper. 6 In Essex in the fourteenth cen- 
tury there was a similar payment, consisting regularly of one 
penny from every man in tithing. 7 Such a payment was usually 
made under the name of tithingpenny even in the reign of 
Henry II, as is shown by quittance of the obligation in royal 
charters. 8 It was stated as a grievance against the abbot of 

1 Young, Dulwich College, ii. 274. 

2 Clark, in Eng. Hist. Review, xix. 719. 

3 Hone, The Manor and Manorial Records, 156, 157, 160. 

4 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 169; Hone, The Manor, etc., 
164 (A. d. 1293), 155 (a. d. 1441). 

5 Hone, The Manor, etc., 147, 148. 

6 Ibid. 155, 157, 158, 160. 

7 Clark, in Eng. Hist. Review, xix. 715-718, xx. 483. 

8 Dugdale, Monasticon, iv. 515. It occurs also in what purports to be a 
charter grant of Henry I made in 1133, though there is question as to the text 
of the document (see ibid. vi. 296). 



102 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

St. Augustine's, Canterbury, that tenants who were freemen 
of the city had to pay borhfaldrespeni in his halimote held in one 
of the suburbs, and were not permitted to be in frankpledge in 
the city. 1 By a Leicestershire customary of the early fourteenth 
century tithingpenny is denned as tallage of the tithing accord- 
ing to custom. 2 Originally it was a payment to the crown levied 
on the tithings by the sheriff, perhaps to meet the expenses of 
holding the view of frankpledge; and there were somewhat 
similar exactions on- the ward and the hundred. 3 As the view 
itself tended more and more to pass into the hands of manorial 
lords by direct grant or by prescription, the new owners gained 
for their lands exemption from making such a payment to the 
fiscal agent of the king, and retained the fee themselves. Hence, 
from the circumstance that it was collected by the lord from the 
tithing, and that those in tithing were chiefly villains, the Leices- 
tershire writer believed it to be a form of tallage. In the geld- 
able parts of the county, tithingpenny was still collected at the 
end of the thirteenth century. In 1293, and at least for sixteen 
years previously, a Staffordshire villain who owed suit of sheriff's 
tourn paid two shillings for each of the semiannual sessions ; 4 
and on a Wiltshire manor at about the same time the payment 
was the same in amount. 5 Where the lord owed the usual mark 
annually for his view of frankpledge, the customary tenants are 

1 Rot. Hundred., i. 203. 

2 Clark, in Archaeologia, xlvii. pt. i. 127. The editor's definition {ibid. 129) 
that it was a tax levied on the tithing by the sheriff seems hardly comprehensive 
enough for a period when the payment had in many cases passed into the hands 
of the lord of the manor. 

3 As in Cockersand Chartulary (Chetham Soc), i. pt. i. 41. 

4 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, vi. pt. i. 276. 

5 Inquisitiones post Mortem for Wiltshire (Wiltshire Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. 
Soc), pt. iv. 228. It is interesting to observe that as early as 12 19 this 
same amount was in some places collected for all in frankpledge who did 
not attend the view. See, for example, Ramsey Chartulary (Rolls Series), i. 
491. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 103 

also found paying approximately half of the sum at each 
session. 1 

The tithing, whatever its size and whatever the principle upon 
which it was formed and named, was under the direction of a 
capital pledge (plegius capitalis), called also the tithingman 
(decennarius) or frankpledge, and in the days of the decline of 
the system the headbourow. In Kent, where a tithing was termed 
a borg (borgha) , its head was known as the borhsealdor or borge- 
sheavod. In a borough ward the alderman, besides fulfilling his 
ordinary duties, sometimes acted as head of the whole ward with 
reference to frankpledge business as well. During the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries tithings in Essex seem regularly to 
have had two capital pledges, 2 an arrangement occasioned per- 
haps by the needs of procedure in the local court. In the four- 
teenth century there were tithings without such officials at all ; 3 
but by that time the original character of frankpledge was some- 
what changed. 

Modern authorities are correct in agreeing that the capital 
pledge gained his place by election at the view of frankpledge. 4 
Near the end of the thirteenth century the hundred of Cale- 
hill in Kent complained that a certain John Baldesert had 
designated John de Eversle to be borgefaldr {borhsealdor) with- 
out election of his borh. 5 On the manor of Wednesbury in Staf- 

1 Cart. St. Peter of Gloucester (Rolls Series), iii. 72. Cf. Willis-Bund, Inquisi- 
tiones post Mortem for Worcester (Worcestersh. Hist. Soc), pt. i. 57. 

3 Turner, Select Pleas of the Forest, 71; Young, Dulwich College, ii. 285; 
Clark, in Eng. Hist. Review, xix. 715-719. 

3 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. lvii. This seems to have been 
due to a general unwillingness to hold so burdensome an office. If there were 
not enough tithingmen at a Norwich leet to make presentments, men from the 
tithings were, as Hudson tells us, sworn to serve as capital pledges for the 
occasion. 

4 Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 98; Vinogradoff, Villainage, 363. 
6 Rot. Hundred., i. 212. 



104 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

fordshire, which was of the ancient domain and had been in the 
hands of Henry II, it was lawful, according to a record of 1330, 
"for the lord of the manor to appoint provosts from year to year 
and tithingmen by election of their peers." 1 Before entering 
upon his duties the new capital pledge took oath that he would 
faithfully perform them. Election was for a one-year term ; but 
it was customary to keep capital pledges in office several years 
in succession, 2 even though the position was one involving re- 
sponsibilities which men were loath to assume. In the time of 
Edward I there was complaint in some quarters that bailiffs 
took money from certain men to remove them from the post 
and to put others in their places. 3 There was apparently an 
effort to have the most substantial men of the tithing in this 
office, and in boroughs like Norwich it was possible to secure 
persons of standing in the community. 4 The older men seem 
often to have served as heads of tithings, for not infrequently 
capital pledges are mentioned as having sons in their tithings. 
Yet, despite all precautions, it seems sometimes to have been 
impossible, especially in rural districts, where the tithings con- 
sisted largely or entirely of villains, to place worthy men at the 

1 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collectionsy ix. 17. In the sixteenth century, election of 
the petty constable, the successor of the tithingman, was by presentment to the 
office in the court leet. See Cox, Derbyshire, 109. 

2 Reference, in the fifteenth century, to removal from office when an election 
takes place (Young, Dulwich College, ii. 281) even leads one to suspect that the 
chief pledge had to serve until formally removed by the court. In some districts 
capital pledges served nine or ten years (Maitland, Court Baron, no). A 
fifteenth-century article of the leet, inquiring whether "any hedborgh of any 
other lete have become resident within this lete " (L. T. Smith, Common-place 
Book, 161), seems to warrant the inference that not even by removal from the 
manor might this official hope to be free from the duties of his post. According 
to Sir Thomas Smith, who died in 1577, petty constables were chosen by the 
homage, and kept their office three or four years, more or less, as the parish 
agreed (see his Common-welth of England, 98 [90]). 

3 Rot. Hundred., i. 489. 

4 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. lvii. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 105 

head of the tithings ; * for more than once in the records the 
capital pledge appears as a criminal and a fugitive. 

In the south and west of England the head of the frankpledge 
tithing was often village reeve as well; but this circumstance 
seems not to have affected his duties as capital pledge, though 
it is often difficult to determine in which capacity he is acting. 
The usual offices of the capital pledge were of two kinds, — 
those pertaining to the actual leadership of the tithing, and those 
connected with the presentment of offences and other matters at 
the view of frankpledge. The Leges Edwardi represent the head 
of the tithing as possessed of a judicial competence ; 2 but this 
is only a legal fable. 

In the first of the capacities mentioned the head man of the 
tithing seems clearly to have been the successor of the Anglo- 
Saxon tithingman, with whom he was identified by writers of 
the twelfth century. 3 As the tithingman in the time of Edgar 
led his men in the pursuit of a thief, so the tithingman of frank- 
pledge days led those under his direction in apprehending known 
or suspected miscreants. 4 By the first quarter of the thirteenth 
century, though he still worked with the assistance of the men 
of his tithing, his position began more and more to resemble that 
of the constable of later days. The capital pledge was now sub- 
ject to direction by the justices or by other officials, in that he 
had to receive into the custody of his tithing at their order accused 
persons who could not be put in prison in the regular way, or 
persons released from prison on bail, 5 or the chattels of fugi- 

1 In 1293 it is recorded that one Berkshire tithingman was a half-virgater, 
and that another was the tenant of a farthing land. See Maitland, Select Pleas 
in Manorial Courts, 165, 169. 

2 Ch. xxix, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 652. 

3 Thus in the pipe rolls of Henry II the-tithing is often called by the Latinized 
English name tedinga. 

* Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester , Nos. 262, 280, 410, 444. 
6 Ibid. Nos. 219, 227, 269. 



io6 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

tives. 1 Direction by a superior peace officer is also obvious in 
cases in which the head of a tithing leads his men to attach the 
person of a man clearly not in frankpledge who is formally 
appealed for crime. 2 In addition to this subjection to the 
justices, there was a similar responsibility to the coroner and the 
sheriff. The fact that a tithing was present when the royal 
bailiff of the hundred captured a man accused of homicide indi- 
cates clearly that the capital pledge, when in active pursuit of a 
criminal, was subject to the orders of a superior local peace offi- 
cer when one was present, 3 just as in the time of Edgar the 
tithingman was summoned by the hundredman. 

From the latter part of the thirteenth century capital pledges 
served as petty constables without the aid of their tithings, 4 by 
acting for them in arresting criminals and harborers of crimi- 
nals, 5 by carrying out the orders of the sheriff in his tourn for 
the remedying of purprestures and nuisances, 6 and by leading 
criminals to prison either with or without his direct order. 7 In 
the reign of Edward I they are to be found acting as custodes 
pads. 8 Before the middle of the next century, with the develop- 
ment of the system of justices of the peace and the regular ap- 
pointment of two constables for each hundred according to a 
provision of the Statute of Westminster in 1285, the heads of 
tithings began to act regularly as assistant peace officers. 9 Thus 

1 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 147; Healey, Somerset- 
shire Pleas ; 246. 

3 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 101. 

3 Healey, Somersetshire Pleas, 50. 

4 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, x. 5; Gross, Select Coroners' Rolls, 67. 

6 Maitland, Court Baron, 99. 6 Fleta, 114. 

7 Rot. Hundred., ii. 214; Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edw. II, 1313-1317, 
pp. 504-505. 

8 According to Coram Rege Roll, No. 148 {24 Edw. I, Public Record Office), 
two frankpledges of a vill in Nottingham acting in such a capacity seized into 
the hands of the king the tenement of a man who had been executed. 

6 Gross, Select Coroners' Rolls, 67, 79. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 107 

the petty constables of Queen Elizabeth's time, "made and 
sworne at the leets of the lords," * were often but the survivors 
of the capital pledges of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 

The second category of duties pertaining to the head of the 
tithing — those connected more immediately with the view of 
frankpledge or court leet — are in general of considerably later 
origin than the offices just noted. Maitland has shown that the 
development of the procedure in these local courts was subse- 
quent to the issue of the Assize of Clarendon, which established 
the sheriff's tourn in its later form and at the same time re- 
quired that crimes be presented by twelve law-worthy men of the 
hundred and four of the vill. 2 The practice of the sheriff's tourn 
was imitated by lords of manors in their courts ; and in course of 
time the capital pledges, who naturally knew about crimes in their 
own vills, were utilized to make the presentments taken on the oc- 
casion of the view of frankpledge, whether it was held in the sher- 
iff's tourn or in the manorial leet, where the lord had the privilege 
of making the view. Such procedure did not, however, always ex- 
cuse the whole tithing from attendance. When this was not re- 
quired the capital pledge was often responsible for producing his 
men on a court day ; 3 and in the fourteenth century they were 
even sworn to be justiciable by him. 4 Appearance on these two 
occasions each year to make presentments either at the tourn or 
at the leet thus came to be recognized as a characteristic feature 
of the capital pledge's duties before the reign of Edward I, 5 and 
seems to have been regarded as dating from that of Henry II. 6 

1 Sir Thomas Smith, Common-welth of England, 98 (90). See also Lambard, 
Constables, 9. 

2 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxxi; Assize of Clarendon, 
chs. i, ix, x, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 143-144. 

3 Maitland, Court Baron, 140; Clark, in Eng. Hist. Review, xix. 719. 

4 Maitland, Court Baron, 101. 

5 Plac. de Quo War., 1, 3, 12, 35, 183, 246, 295, 612, 774. 
Ibid. 506, 553. 



108 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

After the time of Edward I the right to have presentments 
made by capital pledges was a prerogative of the king and of 
those who held view of frankpledge by his authority. In 1330 
there was an instance in which a bailiff of the king, to settle a 
dispute, conceded that for a payment of twelve pence a year the 
heads of tithings of the manor of Clifton might make present- 
ments every three weeks for hue and bloodshed in the court of 
the honor of Peverell at Nottingham. 1 The presentment of 
minor police matters by the capital pledges was an important, 
but not an essential, part of the procedure of the medieval court 
leet. 

Although the responsibilities connected with the headship of 
a tithing were heavy, yet, so far as can be determined, the posi- 
tion brought no exemption from the financial liabilities of the 
ordinary member of a tithing. Whatever the nature of the 
default, the capital pledge was apparently amerced along with 
his associates. It may be said, however, on the other hand that, 
if through any negligence of his the tithing failed to perform its 
duty, all were still amerced in common. If the tithing incurred 
a pecuniary penalty, its head man was before the law but one 
member of the association; but his capability or incapability 
meant so much to the associates whom he directed that their 
influence must have been exerted to keep the best possible men 
in the position. In the fourteenth century, at least, a judicious 
capital pledge might by a small payment sometimes have a 
troublesome person transferred to another tithing, 2 the common 
burden of responsibility for producing him in case he turned 
criminal being thus lightened accordingly. 

This head man, whose character was of such importance to 
his associates, also had responsibilities of his own which they 

1 Plac. de Quo War., 612. 
3 Maitland, Court Baron, 140. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS 109 

did not share. The direction of the numerous activities of the 
tithing was of itself likely to claim much of his time. Further- 
more, his fourteenth-century function of paying in court regular 
sums of money due from the tithing, 1 when taken together with 
the fact that tithings were above all else expected to be obedient 
to their heads in the matter of financial contributions, 2 shows 
clearly enough that the collection from his associates of their 
part of the amercement levied upon the tithing was another duty 
with which he was charged. As late as 1439 the head of a Wilt- 
shire tithing which failed to appear at the tourn and to pay the 
cert silver was to be punished by confinement in the castle of 
Sarum till he rendered satisfaction. 3 For not attending the view 
of frankpledge to make presentments there was of course a fine ; 
and for failure to present offences (concealment), or for bring- 
ing false presentment, there were other amercements awaiting 
the jury of capital pledges. 4 At the end of the thirteenth cen- 
tury the peasant head of a tithing who in the discharge of his 
duty took a criminal to a castle for incarceration was in some 
districts fortunate if he was not compelled by an overbearing 
official to make him a money payment for receiving the prisoner. 
Under such circumstances, the imprisonment of a capital pledge 
for a few days to make him submissive was not an unknown 



measure. 5 



1 Kitchin, Manor of Manydown (Hampshire Record Soc.), 134-135 (a. d. 
1365); Young, Duhvich College, ii. 274. In Rot. Hundred., i. 98, is a complaint 
that in Dorset a man takes money for a felony from men not of his "decena 
de Por stoke" (Poorstock, or Powerstock). 

* See above, p. 90. 

3 Wiltshire Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Magazine, xiii. 114. 

4 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, 11, 12, 14, 22, 44. For conceal- 
ment in the Bishop of Ely's court at Littleport in 1325 twelve free jurors were 
amerced two shillings, and twelve capital pledges twelve pence (Maitland, Court 
Baron, 140). 

5 Rot. Hundred., i. 91, 181; ii. 214. 



no THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

So unpopular did the combination of these features render the 
office of chief pledge that men would gladly have escaped it ; but 
one had to serve when chosen. In the reign of Edward II the 
bishop of Oxford counted among his liberties the right to have 
decenarii for the hamlet of Westington in Suffolk by election of 
the tenants. Any one elected ex officio terrae suae pertinente had 
to serve, on penalty of paying two shillings. 1 Sometimes the per- 
son chosen tried to shirk the responsibility by refusing to be 
sworn ; but for this' evasion there was also an amercement which 
often resulted in a man's changing his mind and taking the oath. 2 
In the leet of the fifteenth century a capital pledge sometimes 
secured removal from his office by a payment of from six to 
eighteen pence; 3 and it may be assumed that, for the period 
before the end of the thirteenth century, when a villain was 
expected to hold a manorial office to which he was elected 
unless he rendered satisfaction to the lord, the capital pledge 
could be excused from serving on no easier condition. A sug- 
gestion of one possible pretext for not fulfilling the duties of the 
position after induction into office comes from Gloucestershire 
about 1 220, when a certain Philip u la prophete" to the custody 
of whose tithing an accused member had been committed, de- 
clared that he could not produce the man before the justices be- 
cause he had assumed the cross. After he had set out, however, 
ostensibly on his crusade, the jurors suspected that this was but 
a ruse, and the justices in eyre required the tithing to produce 
Philip as well as the man committed to its custody. 4 If one 

1 Public Record Office, Coram Rege Roll, No. 225, m. no. 

2 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, 7, and cf. 18. Young (Dulwich 
College, ii. 285) gives a case in a court roll of the year 1410. As late as 1660 
a man was fined for refusing to serve as headborough for Dulwich Manor 
(ibid. 271). 

3 Ibid. 282; Clark, in Eng. Hist. Review, xix. 718. 

4 Maitland, Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, No. 241. 



ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS in 

may form a conclusion from this solitary instance, one may 
affirm that the capital pledge who fled to escape his duties to 
the royal courts was dealt with exactly like a fugitive criminal. 

A review of the history of the tithing shows, then, that the 
arrangement was instituted as a means of preserving the national 
peace. Maintained at first exclusively by the activity of a royal 
official, the tithing performed its duties in connection with the 
system of local courts and the sessions of the king's itinerant 
justices, and in some cases even in conjunction with the central 
courts at Westminster. By the thirteenth century, however, it 
was in many cases sustained by a manorial court, in which it 
came to discharge a large part of its ordinary duty ; and in the 
succeeding century the same process went on to a greater and 
greater extent. In the fifteenth century, although the head man 
retained his functions connected with the maintenance of the 
national peace, the tithing itself, as the sheriff's tourn declined, 
came to be mentioned only in the court that had competence 
pertaining to the manor. In order to understand how this pro- 
cess of decline was brought about it is necessary to study, first, 
the development of the manorial leet from the view of frank- 
pledge, and, secondly, the new system of enforcing peace observ- 
ance which sprang up after the late thirteenth century, topics 
that will be discussed in the next two chapters. 



CHAPTER IV 
VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 

After considering who the members of the tithing were and 
what its functions and obligations, one must inquire into 
the legal processes and constitutional arrangements through 
which its perpetuity was secured and at the same time much of 
its activity discharged. A system of suretyship which was 
depended upon to keep in order the masses of the English 
people was an institution that demanded regular national pro- 
vision for its maintenance and supervision. This provision, as 
long as it existed, bore standing testimony to the importance of 
the system, and its decline was good evidence that reliance was 
no longer put on that method of securing an observance of the 
peace. 

As early as the reign of Edgar, and almost certainly still earlier 
in the time of Athelstan, the maintenance of borh for peace ob- 
servance was intrusted to the court of the hundred. 1 When 
Canute re-enacted a law to enforce such suretyship upon free- 
men generally, he was careful to provide that they must all be 
brought into some hundred. 2 There is no direct means of 
determining whether matters affecting the maintenance of the 
general borh system were taken up at any meeting of the hun- 
dred court, or whether they were dealt with at certain sessions 
only. The fact, however, that mainpast suretyship was pro- 

1 See above, p. 26, note 1. 

1 See above, p. 28, note 1. 

112 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 113 

vided by Anglo-Saxon law for temporary sojourners must have 
limited the necessity of considering such business to a very few 
sessions each year, held at intervals just close enough together 
to prevent the youth who arrived at the age of legal accounta- 
bility from escaping too long from his new obligation to be in 
borh and to make oath promising neither to be a thief nor to be 
cognizant of theft. 1 In the reign of Henry I, after borh had been 
reorganized into frankpledge, it was the practice to hold two 
special sessions of the hundred each year for the transaction of 
this and other kinds of business ; and a century later in Magna 
Carta there is clear intimation that at least since 1166 these 
special sessions had been held, one in the spring and one in the 
autumn. 2 Such arrangements seem so clearly in accord with 
the needs of the borh system in the reign of Canute that one can 
hardly doubt their existence, at least as early as his efforts to 
reorganize that system after the disorder of Ethelred's reign. 3 

The special sessions of the hundred for putting men in frank- 
pledge were ordained by decree of Henry II to be held by the 
sheriffs throughout the realm, except, as it appears, in the case 
of towns and boroughs, which were required to maintain for 
their men either frankpledge or a kindred form of suretyship. 4 
The innovation here, one is to understand, was not the sheriff's 
connection with the business, but the sweeping extension of his 
competence in the matter to private lands and jurisdictions, — 
perhaps the same sort of change which Canute wished to make 
when he required that all men should not only be in borh but 



1 2 Canute, xxi, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 324-325. 

2 Magna Carta of 1217, ch. xlii, Statutes of the Realm, i. 17-19. Cf. 
Assize of Clarendon, chs. ix, x, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 

3 Since writing the above, the writer has observed with interest that Pro- 
fessor Hearnshaw (Leet Jurisdiction in England, 68) is also impressed with the 
probability of the existence of such a "view" in Anglo-Saxon times. 

4 Assize of Clarendon, chs. ix, x, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 

8 



114 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

should also be brought into the hundred courts. That the sheriff 
presided over such sessions of the hundred from a period but 
shortly after the Conqueror's day, there can hardly be a doubt. 1 
Not only was he the logical person to give supervision to the 
courts held in the hundred, but he was the fiscal agent of the 
crown for the county, which is but another way of expressing 
the same idea; for the object in maintaining jurisdiction in 
Norman England was not power so much as revenue. The 
hundred court, which was the principal criminal tribunal of the 
land, was one of the most promising sources of income, a fact 
which, in the reign of William Rufus and in the early part of 
that of Henry I, had led the sheriff to summon it, as well as 
the county court, at other times and in other places than had 
been customary before the Conquest. The latter king, in order- 
ing that these irregularities should not occur except in cases of 
the king's financial necessity, was careful to add in words which 
again remind one of Canute's enactment, that all in the county 
should come to the county and hundred courts as in the time of 
Edward the Confessor, so that none might disturb the king's 
peace and order through failure to follow his pleas and observe 
his judgments. 2 If the king would thus compel his vassals and 
their vassals to adjudicate their cases in his courts for the benefit 
of his exchequer, as was clearly his aim in this decree, it may 
safely be assumed that he would be inclined to have his sheriffs 
attend the hundred courts for the purpose of preserving the 

1 Hearnshaw, after taking the position that the view of frankpledge was 
held by the hundredor, is later convinced that it was the sheriff who in the 
Norman period took the view through the hundreds (see his Leet Jurisdic- 
tion, 66, 337, and note). The well-known writ of Henry I shows conclusively 
that it was the sheriff who at that time convened the hundred for the purposes 
of royal business. See next note; also above, p. 6o, note i. 

2 Writ of Henry (between 1109 and mi) to Bishop Sampson and Sheriff 
Urso d'Abitot of Worcester, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 103-104; also in Lieber- 
mann, Gesetze, i. 524. See Adams, in Amer. Hist. Review, viii. 487. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 115 

sources of considerable revenue arising from the suretyship 
responsibility of the peasants. 

There were numerous occasions upon which the Norman 
sheriff might collect sums of money at the view of frank- 
pledge, for to maintain the frankpledge system amercements 
were of course necessary. The tithing or the tithingman who 
failed in any way to discharge the responsibilities of the office 
was punished by a fine, which in the early twelfth cen- 
tury, as well as in Saxon days, was a heavy one when a man 
under suretyship fled for crime. Another available source of 
profit to a king who demanded for himself alone the right of 
punishing breach of borh on the ground that it concerned the 
general peace and security which he had promised, 1 lay in the 
failure of a vill to have its residents in tithing, a duty that 
was plainly hinted at in the time of Henry I, just as it was 
clearly stated at a later day. 2 One may, therefore, accept with- 
out qualification Maitland's assertion that at least as early as 
the time of Henry I the sheriff presided over two sessions of the 
hundred a year (when as many were deemed necessary), which 
all freemen were to attend in order that inquiry might be made 
whether the tithings were full, or who for any reason had been 
dropped from any of them or had been out of tithing since the 
last view. 3 

Inference may also be drawn for a still earlier time. In the 
fact that information as to view of frankpledge comes subse- 
quently to the coronation charter of Henry I ordering the courts 
to be held as prior to the Conquest, and that persistent tradition, 



1 Leges Henrici, viii. 1, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554; and see Charter 
of Liberties, ch. xii, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 101. 

2 Leges Edw. Con/., xx. 1, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 645. 

3 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxxiii ; Leges Henrici, viii. 2, 
in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554. 



n6 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

current within a generation of the Conqueror's death, 1 ascribes 
to William himself the same sort of decree, with the additional 
requirement that every man have sureties to lead him to justice, 
there seems to be evidence confirmatory of the surmise that 
such sessions had been the normal order, at least from the time 
of Canute. 2 It may further be assumed that they had been held 
by the sheriff ever since the reorganization of his office in its 
fiscal appointments soon after the Conquest. Before that time 
they were probably called by a royal reeve of the hundred, who 
had, among other duties, that of putting men under suretyship, 
and who appears in Domesday as well as in the laws of Edgar, 
Ethelred, and Canute. 3 

This semiannual tour of inspection, the regularity of which 
had been interrupted by the anarchy of Stephen's reign, but 
which Henry II had restored and by the decree of 1166 re- 
organized, — at the same time, in accordance with his custom, 
pushing its authority as far as possible beyond its former 
limits, — had by the early thirteenth century received the name 
by which it is known in law, that of the sheriff's tourn. 

Such an extraordinary session of the hundred, one object of 
which was peace maintenance through suretyship, very easily 
came to deal also with pleas involving infractions of the peace, 
as well as with those concerning local trespasses and disputes. 
Although the writer of the Leges Edwardi is not always good 

1 Willelmi I Articuli X (1110-1135), viii, viii. 1, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 
488; French Articuli of William (1192-1193), ibid. 489; Leis Willelme (1090- 
1135, probably 1100-1120), xx. 7,a, ibid. 506. 

2 The assumption of older writers (see Powell, Antiquity of the Leet, 13) that 
the tourn of the sheriff and the view of frankpledge were instituted by Alfred, 
rests upon the fabulous statements of the Mirror of Justices. See above, pp. 6-7. 

3 Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 113, and notes; Liebermann, Ueber die 
Leges Edw. Conf, 64. Thus the convener of the hundred court in Saxon Eng- 
land could hardly have been the popular hundredman, or hundredealdor. He 
was evidently a royal official. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 117 

authority, he nevertheless shows familiarity with an undoubted 
jurisdiction of the hundred court when he represents the hun- 
dred as making forisfacturas, emendationes, and ordinationes 
in cases between neighbors concerning pastures, meadows, 
and boundaries, as well as in many other such matters. 1 This 
duality of purpose is brought out by the second Magna Carta 
of Henry III, which directs the tourn to be held "that our peace 
may be observed and that the tithing may be intact as it was 
wont to be." 2 Greater as well as lesser crimes had of old been 
punished in the hundred. In the reign of Henry I the view of 
frankpledge at the half-yearly sessions was only one of the items 
of business; but when Henry II introduced into the sheriff's 
semiannual visitation of the hundreds the presentment jury 
and communal accusation of offences in place of private appeal, 
which was as perilous to the accuser as to the accused, the 
result was a greatly increased number of pleas at such sessions. 
After 1 166 a jury composed of twelve men of the hundred and 
four of the township was sworn before the sheriff to present 
those in their community who were suspected of being robbers, 
murderers, thieves, or receivers of such criminals, that they 
might be reported at the sessions of the justices. 3 Such a mode 
of presentment came to be followed for lesser offences also, 
those accused of such faults being tried and amerced by the 
sheriff, who seems to be the only judge mentioned. 4 

This jurisdiction rapidly gained in importance until it over- 
shadowed that of the older semiannual session. Maitland is 



1 Leges Edw. Con/., xxviii, xxix, in Liebermann, Geseize, i. 651-652. It is 
probable that even in the reign of Henry I the capital pledges served as con- 
stables to carry out the court's orders. 

2 Magna Carta of 1217, ch. xlii, Statutes of the Realm, i. 17-19; Stubbs, 
Select Charters, 346. 

3 Assize of Clarendon, ch. i, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 143. 

4 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), >• 547* 



n8 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

thus substantially correct when he contends that the sheriff's 
tourn begins with the Assize of Clarendon in 1166; 1 for, al- 
though the sheriff had long before that time made his round 
of the hundreds, his earlier jurisdiction had neither the charac- 
ter nor the importance of the institution known in legal history 
by the name of tourn. View of frankpledge is not found in 
charters prior to this date, for the reason that as a franchise it 
did not yet exist. The norm for its legal exercise, when it first 
appears in the early thirteenth century, is always the mode 
employed in the reign of Henry II. So considerable a source 
of revenue was to be derived from this jurisdiction that there 
was constant temptation for the sheriff to make his tourn 
oftener than twice a year. Among the concessions that it was 
deemed necessary to make in the king's name in 1217 in order 
to guarantee the rights of the baronial party and to win back 
its allegiance to the crown, was a clause in the Magna Carta 
of that year limiting the number of tourns which the sheriff 
might make to the two a year which had been customary for 
at least a century. At only one of these sessions, however, 
that after Michaelmas — the other was held after Easter — 
was the view of frankpledge thenceforth to have a place. 2 

Since the view, which had formerly been part of the business 
at both sessions, was now to be made at only one, some con- 
fusion of terms naturally resulted, the old name of view of 
frankpledge being often applied to the tourn in general. The 
very justices of the bench were no more explicit in 1231 than to 
say that, by the Great Charter, sheriffs took view of frank- 
pledge and attachments twice a year ; 3 and even when pains 

1 Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, pp. xxxiii-xxxvi. 

2 Magna Carta of 12 17, ch. xlii, Statutes of the Realm, i. 17-19; Stubbs, 
Select Charters, 346. 

3 Bracton's Note Book, ii. 402. Maitland (Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 
p. xxix) has pointed out that even in Coke's day the official style of the tourn 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 119 

were taken to use the term in a more exact sense the distinction 
was not an easy one to make. Britton says that the particular 
session of the court which before the sheriff was called the 
tourn, where a special inquiry was made concerning those not 
in tithing, was even in royal hundreds commonly called view 
of frankpledge. 1 In East England it was called the leet. ? None 
of the writers of the thirteenth century except Britton con- 
sidered it worth while to give the procedure of the view of frank- 
pledge proper as distinct from that of the rest of the tourn. 
Those who were required to be present at both kinds of ses- 
sions were the same persons; and the inquiry concerning those 
not in tithing was made by presentment, just as was that re- 
lating to the other matters taken up at the court. View of frank- 
pledge, then, in the ordinary sense of the term, meant not only 
the actual inquiry as to who was, and who was not, in tithing, 
but also the entire jurisdiction of the sheriff in the tourn. 

The mandate of the Magna Carta of 1217 was by no means 
sufficient to prevent the sheriff from holding more sessions of 
the hundred in his county than those therein provided, or from 
holding them at different times. That the subject was a live 
one for more than three-quarters of a century is witnessed by 
the incorporation of the same safeguards in reissues of the 
charter up to 1297. It was a matter of law, repeated in royal 
writ and in statute, which still needed emphasis at the end of 
the thirteenth century, that the king had " his court in tourns 
and views of hundreds twice a year and not oftener as by the 
Great Charter." 3 At the very end of the century it was still 

was "curia visus franci plegii domini regis apud B coram vicecomite in turno 
suo" (Coke, Fourth Institute, 260-265). 

1 Britton, i. 178, and see also 181. 

2 Rye, North Erpingham, pt. i. 219; Rot. Hundred., i. 442, 470. 

3 Letter of Henry III to sheriffs respecting hundreds and wapentakes, A. D. 
1234, Annates Monastici (Rolls Series), iii. 140; Statute of Marlborough, A. D. 
1267, Statutes of the Realm, i. 22. 



120 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

seasonable for the compiler of laws to repeat, in the words of 
that revered document, that "No bailiff or sheriff ought to hold 
tourn in the hundred except twice a year, only in due and ac- 
customed place once after Easter, and again after the feast of 
St. Michael. View of frankpledge is to be without exaction, so 
that each may have the liberties which he has by just title or 
was wont to have in the time of Henry II or later has rightly 
acquired." * In the time of Edward I the itinerant justices 
seem to have been charged with the duty of making special 
inquiry as to who had made his tourn more than twice a year 
and at what time. 2 In 1357 there were still grievances in regard 
to the same points, the Commons complaining that the sheriffs 
made their tourns oftener than permitted by the Great Charter, 
and that they went " oftentimes in Lent, when men ought to 
intend devotion and other works of charity for remedy of their 
souls, and sometimes after the Gule of August, when every man 
almost is occupied about the cutting and entring of his corn." 
The result was a statute declaring that the sheriff who made his 
tourn except within the month after Easter and the month after 
Michaelmas should lose the tourn for that time. 3 

What aggravated this irregularity and oppression connected 
with the tourn and view of frankpledge was the system of 
farming both the counties and the hundreds. As the sheriff 
was obviously unable to attend two sessions of every hundred 
in his county, especially after the great rush of business which 
followed the changes of 1166, he frequently turned the hundred 
over to a bailiff, exacting from him a farm that would yield a 
good profit over and above the farm which he himself paid to 
the exchequer for his county. The bailiff was therefore inclined 

1 Fleta, 112. 

* Articles of eyre under King Edward, Statutes of the Realm, i. 235. 

3 Ibid. 352. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 121 

to hold court as often as possible and to collect as heavy fines 
and dues as he could in order to reimburse himself ; moreover, 
he was far more likely to be a man who knew how to make 
financial exactions than to be one who knew law. The Great 
Charter of 12 15 aimed to correct these evils by providing that 
hundreds should be let at the ancient ferm without increment, and 
that the royal sheriffs and bailiffs should be persons who knew 
the law of the realm and meant rightly to observe it. 1 A full 
century later, in the reign of Edward II, a second attempt was 
made to remedy the abuses by the passing, in 13 16, of the Second 
Statute of Sheriffs, which, though it really accomplished little, 
revealed the evils of the system. It provided that hundred 
courts, whether they belonged to the king or not, were to be 
held by able persons of standing who had land in the hundred, 
or in the shire in which the hundred was located ; that sheriffs 
or hundredors who were insufficient were to be removed; that 
hundredors to whom the execution of writs directed to the 
sheriff was intrusted were to be known and sworn in full county ; 
and that hundreds were to be leased and bailed to such persons 
for a reasonable rent so that they need not use extortion be- 
cause of "too outrageous a ferm." 2 All these provisions had 
to be re-enacted under Edward III in 1329, and part of them 
again in 133 7. 3 Under their operation the person who held the 
view of frankpledge was likely to be a knight of the shire, 4 
belonging to the same social class as the justices of the peace. 
It was not till 1403 that the sheriff was forbidden by law to farm 
his bailiwick, 5 and not till 1445 that he was prohibited from 

x Chs. xxv, xlv, Statutes of the Realm, i. 6-7; Stubbs, Select Charters, 300, 302. 

3 Statutes of the Realm, i. 175. 

8 Ibid. 258 (Statute of Northampton), 277. 

4 See Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, xiii. 60. 

8 4 Hen. IV, ch. v, Statutes of the Realm, ii. 134. 



122 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

letting out to farm in any way either his county or any of his 
bailiwicks, hundreds, or wapentakes. 1 

According to the writers of the thirteenth century, the suitors 
at the tourn were all the men of the hundred. Even in the early 
twelfth century the attendance at the semiannual views of 
frankpledge was greater than that at the ordinary hundred; 
all freemen, hearthfast as well as followers, were expected to be 
present. 2 The form of summons issued in the early part of the 
thirteenth century was directed to "all free tenants and others 
of the hundred." 3 Britton says that, being summoned, all 
freemen of the hundred and other landholders, except clerks, 
persons in religion, and women, were in general bound to ap- 
pear; and he later shows that the tithings had duties, and con- 
sequently were expected to be present. 4 The Mirror of Justices, 
usually a very poor authority on constitutional history, is on 
some points in regard to this matter more accurate than Britton. 
The writer of this treatise knew that to the earlier rule, 
which required all free tenants to come to the tourn by service 
of their fees, exceptions had been made by Henry III ; 5 and he 
was familiar with that part of the Statute of Marlborough, 6 
taken over from the Provisions of 1259, 7 which excused from 
attendance archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, 
men of religion, and women, unless their presence was especially 
required. With these exceptions, those whose attendance at 
the annual view of frankpledge he regarded as obligatory were 
not only the free tenants, but all men of the hundred, strangers 
as well as denizens, of the age of twelve years and above, except 
knights, deaf mutes, sick folk, idiots, lepers, and those in tithing 

1 23 Hen. VI, ch. ix, Statutes of the Realm, ii. 334-337. 

2 Leges Henrici, viii, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 554. 

3 See Appendix A, below. 4 Britton, i. 178. 

6 Mirror, 38. 6 Statutes of the Realm, i. 22. 

7 Ibid. 9. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 123 

elsewhere. 1 For some reason he exempts only married women, 
a rule which may, like all that he says on this point, be merely 
local in its application. That all those in frankpledge were 
expected to attend the view seems to be a fair inference from 
the Mirror, as well as from Britton. 2 Maitland has called at- 
tention to the fact that in the apocryphal Statute of View of 
Frankpledge a tithing was considered to be sufficiently repre- 
sented by its head. 3 According to Britton, inquiry was directed 
only to the question whether the headboroughs (borhs) had 
come to the view ; 4 but according to Fleta it was also asked 
whether they had their tithings, 5 an inquiry the significance of 
which Maitland finds in the fact that a small payment of head 
money (capitagium, chevagium) was made by capital pledges 
that the men of their tithings might not be called by name. 6 
The capital pledges of course had to attend in order to present 
offences. There is also evidence to show that at the tourn a 
vill was often represented by the conventional four men and the 
reeve. 7 Such was the form of representation for the tithing in 
the south of England, which corresponded in many cases to a 
township. In some instances either the capital pledge or the 
reeve and four men might do suit for a lord's holding. 8 

Summons to the tourn, in the early part of the reign of 
Henry III, directed all free tenants and others of the hundred 
to appear at the place and time set by the sheriff for the tender- 
ing to him of pleas and attachments pertaining to the crown, 
and for the presenting of view of frankpledge as in the time of 



1 Mirror, 39. 2 Britton, i. 178. 

3 Statutes of the Realm, i. 246. 4 Britton, i. 181. 

5 Fleta, 112. 

6 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxxi. 

7 Rot. Hundred., i. 100, 101, 141, ii. 469; Plac. de Quo War., 10, 254, 

293- 

8 Plac. de Quo War., 10. 



124 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

Henry II. 1 If one may believe the Mirror of Justices, essoins 
were allowed for excusing the absence of those who could not 
come, and such essoins might be adjourned to the next ensuing 
court. 2 The same work also says that persons exempt from 
suits in inferior courts were not obliged to come themselves, 
unless their presence was necessary for some other purpose 
than for making the view. 3 As early as 1236 there was a statu- 
tory provision that every freeman who owed suit to the county, 
riding, hundred, wapentake, or court of his lord might "freely 
make his attorney do those suits for him"; 4 and it is not im- 
probable that several persons were represented by the same 
attorney, an arrangement that would have greatly reduced the 
number of persons ordinarily in attendance. 

Accusations were made in the tourn in the form of present- 
ments in answer to certain articles which the sheriff laid before 
jurors. Those requiring record were entered by the coroners 
of the county, 5 to be reported subsequently at the eyre. In 1285 
the Second Statute of Westminster, following the usage of the 
reign of Henry II, provided that indictments in the tourn must 
be made on the oaths of at least twelve men. 6 The writers of 
the later thirteenth century also follow the practice of the pre- 
ceding century in holding that such inquiries must be made by 
the oaths of twelve free men; for a serf could not indict a free 
man. 7 Pollock and Maitland explain the origin of presentment 

1 See Appendix A, below. In a charter concerning a private view it is pro- 
vided that the view be held "at reasonable summons" of the bailiffs (Cart. St. 
Peter of Gloucester, Rolls Series, ii. 36). 

3 Mirror, 41. 

3 Ibid. 38. 

4 Statute of Merton, Statutes of the Realm, i. 4. 
8 See Appendix A, below. 

6 Ch. xiii, Statutes of the Realm, i. 81; Assize of Clarendon, ch. i, in Stubbs, 
Select Charters, 143. 

7 Mirror, 39; Assize of Northampton, ch. i, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 151. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 125 

through capital pledges by the suggestion that "under the 
influence of the Assize of Clarendon the duty of producing one's 
fellow-pledges to answer accusations seems to have been en- 
larged into duty of reporting their offences, of making pre- 
sentments of all that went wrong in the tithing." 1 Before 1166 
the capital pledges may, as Hearnshaw supposes, have an- 
swered questions concerning crimes in their tithings; but they 
could not, as he clearly shows, have had the power to make 
accusations against freemen. 2 In the later thirteenth century 
the capital pledges and the townships, after being sworn, usually 
gave their verdicts to a jury of twelve free men, who, having 
accepted those which they considered true and supplied any 
omissions that had been made, 3 handed over their presentments 
in final form to the sheriff. In the early part of the century a 
royal writ of summons seems to have been regarded as neces- 
sary before a freeman could be put on oath. In the time of 
Edward I, however, it was held that, inasmuch as this was "the 
king's day," instituted for the good of the public peace, persons 
might be sworn without the king's writ in the sheriff's tourns 
and at view of frankpledge as well as at the coroner's inquest 
and before the itinerant justices. 4 As a matter of fact, what- 
ever jurists of this reign may say concerning the necessity of 
presentment in the tourn by twelve free jurors, there are records 
of quo warranto pleas before the royal justices in which pre- 
sentments made by chief pledges alone appear as a matter of 
course. 5 No doubt there were instances in which twelve free 
jurors would not be present. 

1 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), *■ 557- 

2 Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction in England, 68. 

* Britton, i. 181 ; Fleta, 113. See, however, Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction, 70. 

4 Fleta, 113; Britton, i. 9. 

5 Plac. de Quo War., 88. Hearnshaw (Leet Jurisdiction, 67-71) seems to 
have the correct explanation when he contends that the presentments of the 



126 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

Intimation of the exact process of holding view of frank- 
pledge in the tourn comes chiefly from the articles upon which 
the sheriff required the jurors to make inquest. Most of such 
lists as have been preserved are to be found as part of, and 
sometimes scattered among, the items of the larger list used at 
the tourn in general. The very small number of matters con- 
cerning which the sheriff was to have inquiry made in 1166 had 
in the course of a century and a quarter become enormously 
increased. The sets that are extant, besides giving the articles 
in a different order, give different articles, a circumstance 
which seems to warrant the inference of Maitland not only that 
these articles, like those of the eyre, were increased from time 
to time by direction of the king and council, but that the sheriffs 
were permitted to use any articles which they considered neces- 
sary for securing presentment of whatever was against the 
king's peace. 1 The Mirror of Justices adds at the end of 
its list, "and all other articles which may avail for the de- 
struction of sin." 2 Yet it seems evident that in the reign 
of Edward I certain lords, who professed to use the same 
articles as those of the sheriff's tourn, had a very definite list 
in mind. 

In general it is possible to classify the business of the tourn, 
outside of view of frankpledge proper, under the same two 
heads as in the time of Henry II. There were, first, pleas of the 
crown, presentments of which were to be reported to the jus- 
tices. Among many such pleas mentioned about 1290, those 
concerning burglary, robbery, theft, counterfeiting, homicide, 
arson, and the abetting and receiving of persons guilty of such 

capital pledges and those of the twelve free jurors represent two separate sys- 
tems, the former dating from before 1166, the latter from that year, and the 
latter tending to supersede the former. 

1 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, pp. xxxii-xxxiii. 

a Mirror, 40. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 127 

offences/ show that, although the business of the tourn had 
increased, its function of bringing accusations for the greater 
sins against the king's peace was a very important one. A sec- 
ond category of articles had to do with minor police offences. 
Besides the old-time inquiry concerning landmarks removed, 
highways obstructed, waters diverted, and other such misdeeds 
committed within a year and a day, 2 the more prominent articles, 
usually common to the various lists, call for inquiry concerning 
bloodshed, hue and cry wrongfully raised or not followed, pleas 
of forbidden distress or other matters against bail and pledge, 
and infractions of the assizes of bread and beer, cloths and 
measures. 3 

The supervision of frankpledge within the hundred was, as 
already observed, a special item of business at the Michaelmas 
tourn, which from this circumstance was termed the view of 
frankpledge to distinguish it from the session at Easter. When 
the sheriff assembled the men of the hundred after Michaelmas, 
besides laying before the jurors the two kinds of articles just 
enumerated, he submitted to them a third set upon which they 
were to hold inquest in order that presentment might be made 
whether there had been any shirking of the obligation of frank- 
pledge suretyship. As given by Britton, the list of these particu- 
lar subjects of inquiry seems to be substantially that used at the 
end of the thirteenth century. According to it the jurors pre- 
sented upon oath (1) whether all the headboroughs had come 

1 Fleta, 112. Britton (i. 179) also includes inquiry concerning traitors, 
sorcerers, apostates, heretics, and usurers. 

2 Fleta, 114. 

3 Britton, i. 181; Fleta, 112; Mirror of Justices, 39; Statutes of the Realm, 
i. 57, 246 (Statute of Wales, and the so-called Statute concerning Frankpledge) ; 
Maitland, Court Baron, 87; Cart. St. Peter of Gloucester (Rolls Series), iii. 221. 
Cf. also "Capitula de Hokeday," in Dugdale, Monasticon, ii. 83. Hearnshaw 
(Leet Jurisdiction, 43-64) gives a useful summary of various lists of articles 
from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. 



128 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

to the view, and whether they had their tithings complete*, 
(2) the names of those who were twelve years old, and of their 
receivers, or of those who had them in mainpast; (3) a re- 
port of vagrants of suspicious character who were not in main- 
past. 1 In those cases in which the men of a tithing were still 
expected to come to the view in a body there was also special 
inquest to learn who had failed to appear ; and near the end of 
the thirteenth century, at least about London, the jurors seem 
to have made presentment whether or not all in the hundred or 
fee above the age of twelve had sworn fealty to the king, and 
who had knowingly received those who had not done so. 2 

The real basis of this procedure was the information given by 
the heads of tithings and the men of the township. In frank- 
pledge presentments, as in other kinds, the twelve jurors, in 
addition to their own knowledge, had the sworn testimony of 
representatives of the tithings and vills who were present, and 
who were strictly accountable for the correctness of the infor- 
mation which they gave. The capital pledge knew that his 
answer upon oath to the inquiry whether all his men who 
ought to be present were on hand could easily be verified by 
reference to the tithing-list. The reeve and four from the town- 
ship, or territorial tithing, knew that, should they fail to report 
a man who was out of tithing, they would be held responsible, 
and that, should such a person commit a crime indictable be- 
fore the justices, the whole township would be amerced for 
receiving him out of tithing. It was in the interest of the in- 
dividual, as well as of his community, to see that the facts 
were fully and correctly given. 

Upon these presentments the business of the view proceeded. 
Those who had not come as they ought, those who had failed 
to have their tithings come as they ought, those above the age 
1 Britton, i. 181. 2 Mirror of Justices, 39. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 129 

of twelve who had neglected to present themselves for enrol- 
ment in tithings, were all amerced. 1 Such persons as were 
present and were not yet in frankpledge were duly enrolled. 

Just how it was decided in what particular tithing a man 
should be placed is a question that can be answered only by 
conjecture. In the south and much of the west the matter was 
determined by a person's residence. Elsewhere the careful 
inquiry by jurors whether the tithings were full was obviously 
designed to show what groups were in danger of becoming inef- 
fective because of insufficient numbers. In such tithings either 
youths or new-comers must be enrolled, or members of other 
groups must be transferred to them. The fact, already noted, 
that in some cases capital pledges secured changes in the per- 
sonnel of their tithings by making small payments in manorial 
courts, seems to show that the steward had power to place a 
man in whatever tithing he chose ; 2 and, if the manorial steward 
had such power at a private view of frankpledge, the sheriff or 
bailiff of the hundred must have had the same right. Tithing- 
lists of the fourteenth century, however, show that it was not 
then customary to even up tithings by taking men from the 
larger and putting them into the smaller ones. 3 The location of 
a laborer's house, and the place where he ordinarily worked 
during the day, determined the degree of ease with which he 
was able to join with others in a pursuit when the hue and cry 
was raised. Since the same house and the same land were held 
by successive generations of a peasant family, a given frank- 

1 Fleta, 114. 

2 A charter of the abbot of Cirencester, about 1225, provided that "whoever 
wishes to enter or leave a tithing shall enter or leave before our bailiffs at the 
two annual views of frankpledge" (Cart. St. Peter of Gloucester, Rolls Series, 
»• 35-36). 

3 See Clark, in Eng. Hist. Review, xix. 715-719. Tithings on an Essex 
manor which in 1329 numbered respectively 13, 6, 5, 8, 9, 7, in 1337 numbered 
1, 2, 7, 5, 6, 8, 8; and in 1343, 11, 8, 6, 7. See also above, p. 88. 

9 



130 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

pledge must usually have consisted of the men of a few families 
of near neighbors. In course of time a certain section of a 
village no doubt tended to constitute a tithing, just as a certain 
district in a town or a borough often did. 1 

The formality of putting a man in tithing began by adminis- 
tering to him the oath of fealty to the king and his heirs, and the 
old oath neither to be a thief nor to consent to theft, 2 — the 
former the precursor of what is termed by Powell " an oath for 
the demonstration of their natural legiance," 3 the latter a re- 
quirement which had probably been observed continuously from 
the time of Canute. 4 After the oath the names of those entering 
frankpledge were enrolled upon the tithing-lists, a service for 
which it was customary, at least as early as 1198 and probably 
much earlier, to pay the clerk a penny for each person. 5 Some 
exhortation to refrain from crime and from the company of 
criminals seems to have followed this ceremony, together with 
an injunction to each man to obey his capital pledge. 6 

The relation of the view of frankpledge to mainpast is diffi- 
cult to determine. It was necessary to know whether a man was 
in the latter kind of suretyship, not only because in that event 
he was excused from frankpledge, but also because there must 

1 Hudson (Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, pp. Iv, lix) finds that in Norwich 
there was a certain correspondence between tithing limits and parish limits, 
and concludes that the tithing, as well as the tithingman, was attached to a 
district. In Oxford and some other boroughs frankpledge grouping follows 
the wards of the town. See Rogers, Oxford City Docs., 198; Bateson, Records 
of Leicester, ii. 2. 

2 Britton, i. 48; Fleta, 40. 

3 Antiquity of the Leet, 19. 

4 Bracton (fol. 1246, ii. 306) believed that this oath, which he appears to 
have found in the Leges Edwardi, was made in the view of frankpledge even 
in the age when the Leges were written. 

5 Chron. Jocelini de Brakelonda (Camden Soc), 74; Maitland, Court Baron, 
77, 101; Plac. de Quo War., 35. 

6 Mirror of Justices, 41. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 131 

be a record as to who was responsible for producing him in 
case he committed a felony. Many times the lord of persons 
in mainpast had a view of frankpledge of his own, in which he 
exercised jurisdiction in the matter. A literal reading, however, 
of the rule requiring all to take oath in the view of frankpledge, 
considered in connection with the presentments concerning 
those in mainpast and those who had not taken the oath of 
fealty, leads to the inference that upon reaching the age of 
twelve, 1 or upon entering service under a new lord in a new 
community, these retainers not in the franchises of the county 
were required to attend the sheriff's view and to swear alle- 
giance to the king, as well as abstinence from crime and from 
association with criminals. 

A second variety of view of frankpledge is now to be con- 
sidered, — that of the court leet, held not by the sheriff or his 
bailiffs but by a manorial steward as representative of a feudal 
lord. To the modern mind the plan of supervision through 
agents of the crown will appear adequate and statesmanlike. 
At first thought, therefore, it cannot but seem strange that a royal 
power, strong enough to enforce such a system, should have 
tolerated beside it one under which a private person was per- 
mitted in his own court to hold view of frankpledge. A feudal 
lord never was a private person to his dependents, however, for 
feudalism had a political as well as an economic side. Juris- 
diction was a thing of value, and when feudalism was at its 
height any right or perquisite which brought a financial return 
was liable to enfeoffment. Moreover, there can hardly be a 
doubt that the right of inspecting frankpledge tithings, with the 
emoluments consequent to this right, had been in the hands of 
some members of the feudal nobility before Henry II created 

1 Britton (i. 48) says fourteen; but in this assertion he contradicts both 
himself and other writers. 



132 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

what is properly known as view of frankpledge. The subject has 
thus a significance reaching much farther than the question as 
to view of frankpledge ; for both in Bracton and in the quo war- 
ranto pleas the court leet appears as the typical franchise. The 
manner of its acquisition and exercise, therefore, tends to throw 
light on the other regalian rights which the lords enjoyed. 

The word leet is used, after the reign of Edward I, 1 to denote 
the complex of police jurisdictional powers which were asso- 
ciated in the sheriff's tourn and which embraced the view of 
frankpledge. Originally the leet was a territorial division of 
the hundred in East Anglia ; 2 but, like other such divisions in 
England, it came in time to give its name to a court. The ju- 
risdiction of this court in Norfolk and Suffolk so nearly corre- 
sponded to that of the tourn, — which lords all over England 
were claiming, and which Edward I by his great quo warranto 
was attempting to define and to have declared a regalian privi- 
lege, — that the name was quickly adopted by lawyers, and 
early in the fourteenth century was used throughout the coun- 
try. It first appears in a national statute in 13 53- 3 The name 
is thus synonymous with view of frankpledge in the technical 
sense, as well as with the view of the tithings and all the petty 
privileges that went with it. It is doubtless this ambiguity in 
the use of the old term that explains the sudden rise to popu- 
larity of the new one. Besides leta, the terms visus franci plegii 
and curia cum visu franci plegii, visus de borchtrunung 4 and visus 
tethingorum, 5 also occur as designations for this kind of court. 

1 It is used officially before the royal justices in 1292. See Year Book, 20-21 
Edw. I, 297. 

2 Gage, Suffolk, pp. xii-xvii. 

3 Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction in England, 14. 

4 Vinogradoff, Villainage, 363, note 1. In Rot. Hundred., ii. 147 (Suffolk), 
bortr' is the form used. 

6 As in Plac. de Quo War., 259. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 133 

In the later thirteenth century a valid exercise of the franchise 
known as view of frankpledge meant an exercise of the powers 
of the sheriff in the tourn. All the articles concerning which 
the sheriff made inquiry for the preservation of the peace were 
to be used. Not only was there actual view of the tithings, but 
presentments were also taken concerning treasure trove, thieves 
and other malefactors, the assize of bread and beer, roads ob- 
structed, waters turned, hue raised, blood shed, false measures 
and weights, and the various other articles on the list. 1 View of 
frankpledge, argues the king's attorney in 1287, means that all 
of the age of twelve ought to appear in court twice a year for 
the conservation of the peace, and for making presentments in 
regard to all necessary articles to be reported at the eyre. 2 In 
1330 a successor to this official declares that view of frankpledge 
is a royal liberty, which ought to be a unit in itself and which 
ought not to vary in particular cases; that it was instituted ab 
initio for the inquiry by capital pledges concerning all the articles 
touching this view. 3 So well, indeed, did view of frankpledge 
come to be known as a term to denote the leet jurisdiction that 
the phrase, with practically all that it connotes, is to be found in 
the fourteenth and succeeding centuries in Wales, and in various 
parts of England where frankpledge itself never existed. 4 

The process by which these powers were transferred from 
royal to seigniorial hands before their final grouping in the reign 
of Edward I was a long and necessarily a gradual one, dating 
in general from the reign of Henry II, but in some of its aspects 
existing long before his time. The oldest traceable phase is the 

1 See Plac. de Quo War., 1, 3, 4, 5, 9. 

2 Ibid. 249. 

3 Ibid. 505. 

4 See above, pp. 44; 53, note 2. A cursory examination of Hearnshaw's list 
of modern courts leet (Leet Jurisdiction, 248-321) will sufficiently show this 
fact. 



134 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

putting of men in borh in a private jurisdiction, a practice to be 
discovered as early as the Kentish laws of Athelstan. Canute's 
law seems to require that all be put in borh in the hundred, but 
even in his day some local jurisdictions were certainly outside 
the royal hundreds. 1 Grants of authority over hundreds, made 
by Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror, 2 must 
have involved a right to put men in suretyship ; and old Anglo- 
Saxon grants of frithsoken seem to have conferred the same 
right. 3 A conveyance, in the late Saxon and early Norman 
periods, of the privileges known as sake and soke probably had 
a similar effect ; for in the first half of the twelfth century such 
grants certainly empowered magnates to punish in their own 
courts dependents of their mainpast whenever the hue was 
raised after them. 4 As late as 1268 the justices in eyre in Wilt- 
shire assumed that this clause in a charter of Henry I had con- 
ferred the rights appurtenant to the view of frankpledge. 5 Such 
a decision would not have been made twenty years later, for the 
obvious reason that the courts of Edward I required specific 
mention of this franchise before they would recognize the valid- 
ity of such a grant ; 6 and specific mention earlier than the reign 
of Henry II could occur in no genuine charter. 7 But in what- 

1 See Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 260-290. 

2 Ibid. 92, 260. 

3 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxiii, and note 3. A charter 
of Henry III in his thirty-seventh year explains a grant of frithsoken by Richard i 
to the monks of St. John, Colchester, as "view of frankpledge within their 
liberties" (Rot. Chart., ed. Hardy, i. pt. i. p. xxxvii, note 1). 

4 Leges Edw. Con/., xxi. 1, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 647. 

5 Calendar of Charter Rolls, ii. 93-94. 

6 "Non possit recedere de Corona domini regis nisi specialiter fiat mencio 
de eisdem libertatibus in carta ipsius domini regis." — Plac. de Quo War., 

43 2 - 

7 It is absolutely certain, therefore, that thirteenth-century claims of view of 
frankpledge dating from the Conquest are not based on fact. When the justices 
at the time of the great quo warranto do admit such a claim from a charter 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 135 

ever terms the right to put men in frankpledge had been granted 
by the king, or whether, as we may be practically certain for 
the reign of Stephen, it had been assumed as a feudal right, the 
wording of the Assize of Clarendon * clearly shows that this priv- 
ilege, and surely with it the attendant police jurisdiction, had 
since the reign of Henry I been exercised in seigniorial courts 
from which the sheriff was excluded. 

The period during which the lords acquired most of the 
privileges subsequently grouped together in the court leet was 
the century following 1166. It has already been observed that, 
when Henry II introduced the presentment jury into the sheriff's 
tourn in place of private appeal or of the mere report of capital 
pledges when questioned, the effectiveness of the new plan made 
police jurisdiction profitable. " Wholesale," says Maitland, " the 
feudal lords grasped at this new procedure ; nor can the king and 
his officers have tried to resist them very seriously. On the whole 
it was for the good of the peace that there should be as much pre- 
senting of the offenders as was possible." 2 Not till the reign of 
Henry III does there appear evidence of any systematic attempt 
to resist such assumption, but the civil war and the confusion of 
the rest of the reign favored further usurpation. From the battle 
of Evesham seems to have dated the exercise of many an un- 
authorized liberty which Edward I sought to regain. Sometimes 
view of frankpledge was given over to a lord with the require- 
ment that it be made in presence of the king's bailiff, and very 
often the exercise of the right was sanctioned by the king for a 
small annual payment ; but in most cases it was merely a matter 

prior to the time of Henry IT, it is not because the franchise is specifically con- 
veyed, but merely because the wording of the grant is so indefinite, or so in- 
capable of definition at the time, that the conveyance of view of frankpledge 
cannot well be denied. See Plac. de Quo War., 83, 92, 93, 254, 729. 

1 Ch. ix, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 

2 Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxxvi. 



136 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

of the unauthorized appropriation of a profitable right, 1 often 
with the connivance of the sheriff, as is clearly shown by the 
numerous cases of withdrawal of suit of tourn, even under 
Edward I. By his reign view of frankpledge seems to have 
been the most common of all the franchises in private hands. 2 
So surprisingly numerous, indeed, are the instances of assump- 
tion of these privileges that Maitland was even led to doubt 
"whether in the past they had been regarded as regalia, and 
whether the act of assuming them had been regarded as 
wrongful." 3 

An attempt to maintain the rights of the crown in the view 
of frankpledge is evident before the development of the fran- 
chise begins. Henry II went so far as to declare that even in 
manorial courts view of frankpledge should be before the sheriff; 4 
but he undoubtedly claimed more than he gained, and no doubt 
more than he hoped to gain. In some cases his charters acquit 
the grantee of suits and pleas in the hundred court, 5 a policy 
which enabled him to assume this jurisdiction himself; and 
some of these grants even forbid the sheriff or any other royal 
official to enter the hundred. 6 Although Henry no doubt re- 
gained many rights usurped during the reign of his weak prede- 
cessor, yet the quo warranto proceedings of a century later 
show too many lords holding view of frankpledge by prescrip- 
tion from the coronation of his successor to admit of the belief 
that he carried out his theory, or that he legalized these rights 

1 A grant of the privilege in specific terms had been quite unusual. Cf. 
Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, pp. xxii, 86. 

2 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), i. 557. An examination of the 
hundred and the quo warranto rolls quickly convinces one of the truth of the 
statement. See above, pp. 65-66. 

3 Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxi. 

4 Assize of Clarendon, ch. ix, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 

5 Dugdale, Monasticon, iv. 515, vi. 64; Plac. de Quo War., 251. 
c Chron. Monast. Abingdon (Rolls Series), ii. 217, 235. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 137 

by special act, except in a very few cases. What he had really 
done was tacitly to recognize the feudal principle that customary 
possession of a franchise constituted lawful possession. The 
results of this policy his successors had to accept. The prudent 
Marshal in 1217 found it worth while to promise to the barons, 
angered into rebellion by John's violations of their customary 
rights, that the sheriff should make his view of frankpledge in 
such manner as to preserve to them intact the liberties which 
they possessed in the time of Henry II, as well as those subse- 
quently acquired in rightful manner. 1 It would thus appear 
that John had deviated from the moderation of his father by 
attempting to carry out too literally the principle laid down in 
the Assize of Clarendon. An effort to check seigniorial usurpa- 
tion was again apparent when in 1254 the justices at Lichfield 
made inquiry concerning those who, since the war between John 
and the barons, had withdrawn suit of shires or hundreds or 
sheriff's aids by leave of the sheriffs and bailiffs or by assent of 
the king; and still again when, in the next year, the justices 
were commissioned to inquire throughout the kingdom who 
held view of frankpledge without the sheriff and without war- 
rant of the king. 2 Henry III was never able to follow up the 
matter. His great successor, however, continued to act along 
this line for no less than sixteen years, conducting a thorough 
inquest into regalian rights in private possession, and then, by 
the great quo warranto, systematically attacking unauthorized 
franchises. Finally, by his statute of 1290 he confirmed not only 
the policy of Henry II but also the very status of affairs which 
had existed during the latter's reign. Liberties used from a 
period before the time of King Richard without misuse were to 

1 Magna Carta of 1217, ch. xlii, Statutes of the Realm, i. 17-19; Stubbs, 
Select Charters, 346. 

2 Annates Monastici (Rolls Series), i. 331, 337, 338. 



138 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

be confirmed by patent of the king, and other liberties were to 
be judged by the custom of the realm. 1 

The result of the quo warranto of Edward I, so far as it 
affected view of frankpledge, was a compromise. The franchise 
was left largely in the hands of those who already held it; but 
its regalian character was affirmed, and the royal right to fix 
the conditions under which it should be exercised, and thus to 
unify its procedure, was clearly established. Many of the 
wrongful holders of the franchise had long been in seisin; and 
juries were, out of mere ignorance, likely to swear that such seisin 
had been held since legal memory. It is interesting to note 
that, when in the earlier stages of the proceedings the royal 
attorneys set up the theory that view of frankpledge could 
"only be deduced from an antecessor who had come in with the 
Norman Conqueror," 2 the lords set about proving this utterly 
impossible duration of seisin, just as they later established it 
merely for a single century. The quo warranto pleas show 
that, out of a multitude of cases examined, the number of 
franchises actually assumed by the king was very small. In his 
son's reign there seems to have been a renewed usurpation of 
them, which was investigated in a new quo warranto at the 
beginning of the reign of Edward III, an examination which 
showed that, as a rule, a view of frankpledge forfeited to the 
king was restored on condition of a small annual payment. 3 By 
the fifteenth century view of frankpledge had come to be asso- 
ciated with the manorial court rather than with the sheriff's 
tourn, a judicial decision of 1441 even denying to the tourn the 
legal jurisdiction of the leet. 4 As to the number of views that 



1 Statutes of the Realm, i. 107. 

2 Plac. de Quo War., 93, 434, 437. 

3 Ibid. 21, 31, 35, 36, 96, 161, 505, 508, 5I4-5 1 ?, 536, 57 6 - 

4 Year Book, 18 Hen. VI, Trin., pi. 11. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 139 

had fallen into private hands there is some hint in the explana- 
tion considered necessary by Sir Thomas Smith in the second 
half of the sixteenth century, wherein he sets forth that a 
court leet is not incident to every manor, but is acquired only 
by special grant or by long prescription. 1 

The uniformity of practice attained through the attack of 
Edward I on the franchises was, after all, the great result. In 
order to retain those rights which were now collectively known 
as leet jurisdiction, a lord must demonstrate that he had right- 
fully acquired them and had used them according to the cus- 
tom of the realm. The authoritative criterion for determining 
this custom was, of course, to be sought in the royal jurisdiction 
of the tourn. The court leet remained in the hands of the lords ; 
but from a seigniorial court it had come to be part of the national 
judicial system, which in less than a century Parliament was to 
regulate. 2 According to later English law, the power of the 
sheriff in the tourn and that of the steward in the leet are one. 3 

After 1290 the law required that the holder of view of frank- 
pledge either must have a definite concession of this right from 
the crown or must inherit it from some one who did have such a 
concession. 4 It was no longer possible to claim that quittance 
of frankpledge or of suit of hundred, or some other vague ex- 
pression in an old charter, conferred such a power. 5 Nor 

1 The Common-welth of England, 88 (80). 

2 In 1376. See Rot. Pari, ii. 368. 

3 Year Book, 22 Edw. IV, Mich., pi. 2; Powell, Antiquity of the Leet, 22. 
Of a statute concerning the tourn, Coke says, "This tourn of the sheriff is Curia 
Vicecomitis Franciplegii (as it hath been said) and therefore this act extended 
to all leets and views of frankpledge of all other lords and persons " (comment 
on the Statute of Marlborough, ch. x, in his Second Institute, 1671, p. 121). 

4 In the hundred of Calne in 1255 Eva de Cantilupe held view of frankpledge 
as part of her widow's third. See Rot. Hundred., ii. 230, 236, 239; Marsh, 
Calne, 24. 

5 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), l - S^°> note * > Ptoc. de Quo 
War., 83, 92, 93. 



140 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

could view of frankpledge any longer pass by simple enfeoff- 
ment. 1 Even a grant of Richard I conferring "all liberties 
which the crown can confer" was in 133 1 rejected by the king's 
justices as not containing specific reference to view of frank- 
pledge. 2 

To retain his view of frankpledge in the age of Edward I the 
lord had to conform to minute regulations as to the manner in 
which he used it. The king's attorneys made a determined 
effort to prevent "the exercise of such jurisdiction over detached 
pieces of land, on the ground that presentments for conserving 
the peace ought to be made by neighbors. Since, according 
to the custom of the realm, the presentment jury had to consist 
of twelve men, and since in the private view of frankpledge these 
twelve were capital pledges, it followed, according to the royal 
theory, that the lord must have twelve tithings. The presentors, 
moreover, must all live in the same county, for the sheriff could 
hold view of frankpledge in his own county only. These the- 
ories, however, prevailed only in part. View of frankpledge 
was sometimes held, without any protest from the king's officers, 
not only for men on very small tracts of land, 3 but for those on 
detached areas as well. 4 

Within the precincts of his leet the lord was expected, in the 
time of Edward I, assiduously to exercise the liberties which he 
claimed, at the same time taking care that he did not do that 
which was contrary to custom or that for which he had no war- 

1 Plac. de Quo War., 4, 10; Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, vi. pt. i. 243; 
Calendar of Charter Rolls, ii. 93-94. 

2 Plac. de Quo War., 15-16. 

3 In Cambridgeshire it is to be found on two carucates of land, and in another 
case on a knight's fee, which had twenty-three acres of arable and six acres of 
wood. In still another instance, a view of frankpledge went with the gift of one 
hide of land, though it no doubt was held for men on other hides as well. See 
Rot. Hundred., ii. 552, 556, 710. 

4 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), i- 568. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 141 

rant. The grant of view of frankpledge made to him was, 
according to Bracton, valid only when exercised. 1 If a lord 
whose view included the duty of hanging thieves let his gallows 
fall down, he thereby lost the liberty, 2 as he did also if he claimed 
the right to punish infractions of the assize of bread and beer 
and did not maintain a pillory and tumbril for the purpose. 3 
If he did not hold his view regularly, or if he let a session of the 
eyre pass without making a formal claim to the franchise which 
he held, either fact might be cited in evidence against him if his 
right was questioned. 4 Likewise, if he once made the usual 
payment to the sheriff for holding view, this circumstance was 
evidence against him, for the king was in seisin of such payment. 5 
On the other hand, he must be careful not to assume jurisdiction 
wrongfully. If without special arrangement he held view in 
the absence of the king's bailiff, he lost the privilege. 6 If he had 
his capital pledge make inquiry concerning other articles than 
those which he claimed, 7 or if he took presentments on the 
articles of purpresture and the assize of bread and beer made 
by the reeve with less than four men, 8 he forfeited his view. 
Above all, at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the 
fourteenth century, he must not without a special grant punish 
delinquencies in the last-named matter by substituting amerce- 
ment for the pillory and tumbril; 9 for the taking of fines in 
such cases was so serious an infringement of the prerogative of 
the king that it was a sure ground for the forfeiture of the 
view. 10 
As the private view of frankpledge was a substitute for the 

1 Bracton, fol. 56, i. * Plac. de Quo War., 303. 

3 Ibid. 34. * Ibid. 19, 33. 

6 Ibid. 88. 6 Ibid. 65. 

7 Ibid. 35, 42-43. 8 Ibid. 604-605. 

8 See Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edw. I, 1272-1281, p. 418. 
10 See, for example, Plac. de Quo War., 31-36, 516. 



142 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

tourn, its sessions had to be held ordinarily at the same period 
and practically at the same date twice a year, at Martinmas and 
Hokeday. 1 This was true as early as 1225, 2 and probably as 
early as 1166. Since by the Great Charter of 1217 the sheriff 
was to make view of frankpledge at but one tourn each year, 
some of the lords were not slow to seize upon this parallel as an 
excuse for holding but one leet each year in their courts. The 
claim that but one view had been customary was very likely to 
be made when a' fief with view passed from the hands of the 
king to those of one of his subjects. As early as 1234, however, 
the King's Bench held technically that the two tourns of the 
sheriff each year were views of frankpledge. 3 In the time of 
Edward I there was complaint that the Templars made view 
of frankpledge twice where the king, according to the custom 
of the county, made it but once ; 4 but the royal attorney, hold- 
ing to the theory that a tourn was a view of frankpledge, de- 
clared that the holding of view once a year was "against the 
custom of the realm and the form of the Great Charter." 5 
Sometimes, however, it is shown that view was actually made 
but once a year. 6 At the beginning of the reign of Edward III 
a lord might for an annual payment be allowed to choose his 
own time for holding this yearly session. 7 

It was the policy of the Plantagenets, following the decree of 
Henry II, to have view of frankpledge in manorial courts made 
in presence of the sheriff or of his bailiff whenever possible. To 
use the phrase of the royal attorney, the bailiff was to come and 

1 In Rot. Hundred., i. 101, there is reference to the tourn's being held at 
these two dates. Hokeday was the second Sunday after Easter. 
* Cart. St. Peter of Gloucester (Rolls Series), ii. 36, 182. 

3 Bracion's Note Book, ii. 401-402. 

4 Rot. Hundred., i. 287 (Lincoln). 

6 Plac. de Quo War., 299 (Huntingdon, 14 Edw. I). 

6 Ibid. 4 (Bedford, 5 Edw. I). 

7 Ibid. 50. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 143 

see that it was reasonably done. 1 Some of John's charters 
specifically provide that view shall be made in presence of his 
officer; 2 and one of the year 1202 grants view of frankpledge 
to the abbot of Ramsey on all his lands, subject to the oversight 
of the royal bailiff " according to the custom of the realm." 3 
This view was actually held, however, by the abbot's steward or 
by his bailiffs. 4 On these manors, as elsewhere, the custom was 
to give the royal bailiff reasonable summons, and then, if he did 
not come, to hold court without him. 5 When one prelate turned 
his view over to another he sometimes made a similar provision 
for supervision by his own officers. 6 Henry III and Edward I 
both made to prelates grants of view of frankpledge which ordi- 
narily excluded the royal officials ; 7 but, although in such in- 
stances the king's representative had no right to attend, it was a 
special privilege to be allowed to hold these sessions in his ab- 
sence. 8 For doing so without leave no less distinguished a 
person than Earl Humphrey Bohun forfeited his view of frank- 
pledge on some of his estates in Huntingdonshire. 9 The object 
of the king's insistence on this point was to gain recognition of 
his ultimate right of control. Bracton says that, although in 
general the king's sheriffs and bailiffs are to be prohibited from 
entering any one's estate upon a liberty granted by the king, 
nevertheless by virtue of the gift of the liberty they may in the 



1 Plac. de Quo War., 104. 

a Such a charter to the Bishop of Sarum in 1200 is to be found in the Register 
of St. Osmund (Rolls Series), i. 211. 

3 Ramsey Chartulary (Rolls Series), ii. 63. 

4 Ibid. i. 285, 286, 295, 343, 355, 49*- 

6 Plac. de Quo War., 104. 

8 Ramsey Chartulary, ii. 321. 

7 Calendar of Charter Rolls, ii. 142, 331, 485-486. A confirmation of such a 
grant to the abbot of Peterborough included eight hundreds in Northamptonshire. 

8 Plac. de Quo War., 245, 293. 

9 Ibid. 303. 



144 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

king's name make summons and attachments and views of 
frankpledge and all things pertaining to the crown. 1 Even in 
a charter of Edward excluding his officials from the land of the 
prioress of Ambresbury the right of entry in cases of default is 
reserved. 2 After this principle gained recognition it seems to 
have been customary to leave the view of frankpledge com- 
pletely in the hands of the manorial steward, under the operation 
of the rule, to be found still in force at a much later time, that, 
if the steward did not properly discharge his duty toward the 
public peace, the sheriff or the justices in eyre might take pre- 
sentments in his stead. 3 

At the manorial view of frankpledge, as at the sheriff's view, 
the attendance of peasants was required in person and not 
merely by reason of tenure. 4 It was the duty of the manorial 
steward to see that the bailiffs were warned to summon to court 
for the time appointed those who owed suit. 5 In the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries it was customary for the lord to specify 
suit at the semiannual views of frankpledge as one of the con- 
ditions upon which his tenants held their land of him ; 6 but 
whether or not they owed such suit without a direct bargain 
seems to have depended upon custom. 7 Certain classes of the 

1 Fol. 56&, i. 448. 

3 Calendar of Charter Rolls, ii. 351. 

3 Year Book, 10 Hen. IV, Mich., pi. 9. 

4 Ibid. 21-22 Edw. I, 399. 

5 Maitland, Court Baron, 69. 

8 See, for example, Cart. St. Peter of Gloucester (Rolls Series), ii. 251; Inqui- 
sitiones post Mortemfor Wiltshire (Wiltshire Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc.), 
pt. iii. 184; Willis-Bund, Inquisitiones post Mortem for Worcester (Worcestersh. 
Hist. Soc), pt. i. 29. It was expected by the abbot of Ramsey in 1219 that the 
holder of a hide of his land was to come with his tenants to the view of frank- 
pledge, and was to pay two shillings once a year for each of those in tithing 
who did not come. See Ramsey Chartulary, i. 491. 

7 See Baigent, Crondal Records (Hampshire Record Soc), pt. i. 13-14, 48; 
Plac. de Quo War., 612; Willis-Bund, Inquisitiones post Mortemfor Worcester, 
pt. i. 29. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 145 

unfree were not compelled to be present. Not only women and 
children but also personal attendants of the lord were excused ; 
and special exemptions were made by the lord for shepherds, 
plough-boys, and men engaged in the carting service. 1 More- 
over, as in the sheriff's view, it was usual to excuse from attend- 
ance the great body of men in frankpledge (but often for a money 
payment), and to permit the tithing to appear by the capital 
pledge alone. 2 Such representation of a vill by its capital pledge 
at the semiannual law hundreds is recorded as early as 1227. 3 
The general procedure of view in the leet was necessarily the 
same as that in the tourn. The articles of view of frankpledge 
had to be the same in both courts, and after the latter part of 
the fourteenth century were subject to parliamentary regula- 
tion. 4 The jurors who made the presentments were, however, 
much more likely to be capital pledges than in the sheriff's view, 
for it was already the theory of the law in the time of Henry III 
that a lord could not put free men on oath without the direction 
of the king. 5 Presentment by villains, it is true, violated the 
principle that a free man was not to be indicted by one who was 
not free; but if it was necessary, as it seems to have been in 
some instances, for a sheriff to ignore this principle in order to get 
presentments at all, much more was it necessary for the manorial 
steward. Sometimes he was able to make inquest upon the oaths 
of twelve free tenants " charged upon the presentments of the 
frankpledges" after the fashion in the tourn; but more often, 
in spite of all complaint about the irregularity of allowing the 
head of a tithing to make presentments involving a free man, 6 

1 Vinogradoff, Villainage, 363, and note 6. 

3 Pollock and Maitland, English Law (1895), *• 557* 

3 Bracton's Note Book, ii. 195. 

* Rot. Pari, ii. 368. 

5 Rot. Hundred., ii. 203. 

6 Ibid. i. 442, ii. 203. 

10 



146 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

the leet jury consisted of twelve capital pledges. 1 It is only 
in rare instances that the empanelling of a leet jury is men- 
tioned. 2 By 1340 the rule was laid down for the guidance of 
manorial stewards that, if there were not twelve free tenants, 
the presentments might be made by six bondmen and six free- 
men; 3 and by 1367 it was customary for them to be made by 
the chief pledges. 4 Maitland has even called attention to an 
admission by a judge in the time of Edward III to the effect 
that in some districts the articles of view were presented by 
twelve dozeners, in others by only two or three, "according to 
the usage of the country." 5 In 1405, however, the rule is 
clearly enunciated that presentments in the leet shall be by 
twelve and not fewer, otherwise they are traversable. 6 In 
some places double presentment by both jurors and heads of 
ti things was preserved. Sometimes presentments were offered 
to the jurors by representatives of four townships, 7 and some- 
times by individual capital pledges, either without their tithings 8 
or with them. Presentment at the manorial view of frank- 
pledge was thus often made by the entire homage. In the south 
of England especially, but by no means exclusively there, it was 
usual for each tithingman to make presentments to the jurors, 
who then declared upon oath whether or not all the tithingmen 
had "presented well and faithfully in all things." 9 

1 As in Maitland, Court Baron, 73, 87, 100, no. 

2 As in Mayo, Records of Shaftesbury, 20. 

3 Maitland, Court Baron, 97. 

4 Year Book, 41 Edw. Ill, fol. 26, Mich., pi. 23. 

5 Select Pleas in Marorial Courts, p. xxxv. 

6 Year Book, 6 Hen. IV, Hillary, pi. 4. 

7 Maitland, Court Baron, 73. 

8 Ibid. 97; Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 165, 168-169; Young, Dulwich 
College, ii. 282; Kitchin, Manor of Manydown (Hampshire Record Soc), 

I34-I35- 

9 Hone, The Manor and Manorial Records, 156; Maitland, Select Pleas in 
Manorial Courts, p. xxxiv. 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 147 

Preservation of the peace and desire for the revenues conse- 
quent thereto were not the only motives that a lord had for 
maintaining frankpledge. When a man was put in tithing in a 
leet, his oath included, in some cases at any rate, not only the 
usual pledge of fealty to the king, but also a special promise of 
fealty to the lord, and sometimes of obedience to his bailiffs. 1 
Before the middle of the thirteenth century the reception of a 
man into a tithing is thus connected with his reception into the 
lord's service. Failure to be in the tithing might be a cause for 
forfeiture of the land held of the lord. 2 The stranger, and in 
the fourteenth century the boy who had reached the age of 
twelve, were forbidden to remain on the lord's land unless they 
were in tithing ; 3 and whoever harbored the latter or let a 
house to the former while this requirement was unfulfilled was 
subject to an amercement. But there was yet another way in 
which the tithing of the king served the ends of the lord. The 
reading of the tithing-lists, and the presentment by the capital 
pledges twice a year as to whether any were missing from their 
tithings, revealed which of the villains were away from the 
manor, 4 and enabled the steward to take measures in the leet to 
secure their return. 5 Thus the maintenance of frankpledge by 
the leet not only aided in the preservation of the king's peace 
but also served purely manorial ends. 

A second species of court leet to be noticed is that held in 
boroughs where frankpledge existed. This was one of the most 
important courts of the borough. Its beginnings are to be sought 
as early as the decree of Henry II that men should not be re- 
ceived into boroughs and cities except under mainpast or in 

1 Maitland, Court Baron, 77, 101; Hone, The Manor, etc., 148. 

2 Baigent, Crondal Records (Hampshire Record Soc), pt. i. 147. 

3 Maitland, Court Baron, 72, 97. 

4 Ibid. 69, 71, 72. 

5 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 89, 168. 



148 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

frankpledge; * and by 1473 ^ existed in most of the important 
towns and boroughs in England. 2 Before the time of Edward I 
it was sometimes held by prescription without royal concession, 
just as in the case of the manorial leet. 3 The semiannual view 
of frankpledge for the borough is often mentioned ; 4 and one 
sometimes finds the statement that it was held near Michaelmas 
and Hokeday. 5 In some boroughs, however, as in some manors, 
the leet met but once a year. That at Southampton was, and 
still is, held on tfoke Tuesday. 6 At Ipswich in the thirteenth 
century, probably in accord with a local custom prevalent be- 
fore 1200, view of frankpledge was held throughout the week 
of Pentecost. 7 Although such variety of practice undoubtedly 
often resulted from old local usage, in some cases it probably 
came from a like variety in manorial custom ; for in numerous 
boroughs of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries view of 
frankpledge was still in the hands of feudal overlords. 8 The 

1 Assize of Clarendon, ch. x, in Stubbs, Select Charters, 144. 

2 Statutes of the Realm, ii. 442. 

3 See above, p. 61, note 5. 

4 Griffith, Records of Huntingdon, 20; Plac. de Quo War., 246 (Tewkesbury), 
660 (Newark) ; Ogle, Royal Letters to Oxford, 35. 

6 Harrod, Court Rolls of Colchester, 8; Mayo, Records of Shaftesbury, 19. 

6 Southampton Leet Records (ed. Hearnshaw), i. p. xi. 

7 Black Book of the Admiralty (Rolls Series), ii. 130. Purprestures were to 
be removed by bailiffs and chefs plegges presentours within forty days afterwards. 

8 Thus in 1255 Eva de Cantilupe had a third part of the view in the borough 
of Calne as portion of her dower, her husband having had view for the whole 
hundred (Rot. Hundred., ii. 236; Marsh, Calne, 24). In 1287 the abbot of 
Tewkesbury had a third interest in the view of the vill of Tewkesbury, and 
held the whole view in Bristol extra portam Laffordi (Plac. de Quo War., 246). 
About the same time the bailiff of Earl Richard of Cornwall had view of the 
borough of Wycombe (Rot. Hundred., i. 34). At Newark, where in 1330 the 
bishop of Lincoln claimed view of the half wapentake, his free burghers of 
the vill were required to come to the view but once a year (Plac. de Quo 
War., 660). A similar exercise of power over the territory on which a borough 
was located is found in the south of England, Henry III having by charter granted 
to a certain Walter view of frankpledge on the lands of Guildford, both in the 
borough and out of it (ibid. 743). 



VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE 149 

tourn, moreover, which, as has been seen, sometimes served 
as a precedent for the practice of holding a manorial leet but 
once a year, not improbably influenced some of the boroughs 
in the same way. In a borough like Tavistock, for example, 
where before the king's charter was granted the sheriff made 
his tourn but once a year, 1 there might well have been a 
tendency to continue the same arrangement under the charter. 

In towns that held their own view one of two general plans 
was followed. Either a view was held for the whole borough 
by the mayor and bailiffs or by the mayor and aldermen, 2 or 
else there were several wards or leets, each with its own view 
held by the alderman of the ward or by the bailiffs of the town. 
A typical example of the mickletorn occurs at Nottingham, 3 one 
of the sub-leet system at Norwich, while instances of the 
division of the tourn into wards, each in charge of an alderman, 
are found at Oxford 4 and London. 5 At Norwich, following 
the East Anglian plan of dividing the hundred into twelve leets, 
there seem to have been originally four great leets, each with 
three subdivisions, the sub-leets containing collectively about a 
hundred and sixty tithings, which were so distributed as all to 
fall within the body of one of the forty-six parishes. 6 In a 
borough in which the ward system of maintaining frankpledge 
was in vogue there were usually four wards. 

As to what went on at these courts, town records occasionally 
give some information. In some of them there was the pre- 
sentment of purprestures ; 7 in others it was customary to make 

1 Rot. Hundred., i. 81. 

2 Hedges, Wallingford, ii. 11; Davies, Southampton, 233. 

3 Stevenson, Records of Nottingham, i. 315. 

4 Rogers, Oxford City Docs., 195, 197. 
6 Liber Albus (ed. Riley), i. 99. 

6 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. liv. 

7 Black Book of the Admiralty, ii. 131. 



150 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

inquiry concerning all the articles which the sheriff might use 
in his tourn. 1 At Ipswich in the thirteenth century and at Not- 
tingham in the early fourteenth the presentors were capital 
pledges, 2 as they were also at a later time in towns of East 
Anglia and the north midlands. 3 At other places, both in the 
late thirteenth century and long afterwards, the burghers an- 
swered at the view, not by capital pledges, but by a jury of 
twelve, 4 which was empanelled. In boroughs capital pledges 
did not, it seems, usually present hue levied and blood shed, for 
in most places there were special officers to do this. 5 At Bury 
St. Edmunds, in 1198, it was already customary to keep rolls 
for recording the pledges, and to require the payment of the 
pence called borth-selver from those whose names were thus 
enrolled. 6 For London there is preserved a copy in French of 
an oath that was used in putting men in frankpledge ; 7 and for 
Leicester an account of the pence received from some three 
hundred persons in tithing in the year 1375, and from a some- 
what smaller number in 1376. 8 Such occasional glimpses of 
the borough leet in action reveal a procedure for presenting 
offences and for putting men in frankpledge like that of its 
manorial original. 

1 Harland, Mamecestre (Chetham Soc), i. 194; Griffith, Records of Hunting- 
don, 20. 

2 Black Book of the Admiralty, ii. 131; Stevenson, Records of Nottingham, 
i. 66. 

3 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, p. lxix ; Cox and Markham, Records 
of Northampton, ii. 141. 

4 Plac. de Quo War., 246. 

6 Maitland, Court Baron, 80. 

6 Chron. Jocelini de Brakelonda (Camden Soc), 74. 

7 See Appendix B, below. 

8 Bateson, Records of Leicester, ii. 153. 



CHAPTER V 
DECLINE AND RESULTS OF THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

The decline of frankpledge as an effective agency for keep- 
ing the peace of the realm dates from the very period in which 
the complete centralization of the machinery for its mainte- 
nance was achieved. The effort of the king to control the pro- 
cedure of the leet system seems to have been due in part to a 
failure of the suretyship of the tithing and the presentments of 
the tithingman to secure a proper observance of the peace, and 
to his consequent desire to direct the leet as well as the tourn in 
such a manner as to correct this defect. The rule that the lord 
must in his view of frankpledge make inquiry concerning all the 
articles of the sheriff's tourn, taken with the rule that present- 
ments must be made in a manner which the king's justices would 
recognize as valid, clearly reveals the royal purpose in this 
regard. 

The failure of frankpledge to fulfill the prime object of its 
existence was obvious while Edward I was still on the throne. 
All over England crime seems to have been increasing. Gaol- 
delivery records show an unusually bad state of affairs. The 
preamble of the Statute of Winchester in 1285 complains of the 
wretched observance of the peace, 1 and the complaint is renewed 
in the Articuli supra Cartas fifteen years later. 2 In the year 

1 Statutes of the Realm, i. 96; Stubbs, Select Charters, 470. 

2 Statutes of the Realm, i. 154. 

151 



152 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

1285 the story of crime in the single hundred of North Erping- 
ham in Norfolk is declared to be "so ghastly as positively to 
stagger one " ; 1 but much of this crime was committed by vag- 
abonds, for whom no tithing could be responsible. 2 

The system of frankpledge had clearly lost its old effective- 
ness both in preventing crime and in securing the punishment 
of criminals, a failure due partly to an antiquated system and 
partly to a faulty mode of holding criminal courts. The tith- 
ingman was coming to act instead of the tithing in making 
arrests and in offering presentments; and the ordinary mem- 
bers of the tithing, already often excused from actual appear- 
ance in tourn and leet, were thus being farther and farther 
separated from direct touch with the police and criminal admin- 
istration. To bring home to each locality a realizing sense of 
its responsibility, therefore, Edward I enacted a new law mak- 
ing the people of each hundred and franchise responsible for 
robberies and damages arising through their failure to produce 
the offenders. 3 The half-mark usually paid by the tithing for 
the escape of an offending member in the time of Henry II, — 
so heavy a burden that in some instances the sheriff seems to 
have been compelled to defer its collection for a year or even 
longer, 4 — had now come to represent a far slighter value, the 
payment of which was inadequate to spur the community to 
capture a fugitive neighbor with whom it was often in sym- 
pathy. The actual sum collected, moreover, in the reign of 
Edward I, as well as in the reigns of his son and grandson, was 

1 Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, 100; Rye, in Archaeol. Review, ii. 206 ff. 

2 Thus, Assize Roll, No. 12 (Public Record Office), containing a record of the 
Bedford eyre, 15 Edward I, shows that in practically every serious case the 
criminal is either vagabundus or alienus extraneus. The other assize rolls of the 
time show a similar increase of itinerancy on the part of criminals. 

3 Statute of Winchester, ch. i, Statutes of the Realm, i. 96; Stubbs, Select 
Charters, 470. 

4 Compare Pipe Roll, 12 Hen. II, 14, 70, with Pipe Roll, 13 Hen. II, ic6, 161. 



DECLINE AND RESULTS 153 

often but forty pence, just half the original amount. 1 By the 
end of the thirteenth century the clumsy plan of utilizing the 
frankpledge tithing as constabulary had, in short, become ob- 
scured by the many other functions thrust upon it, by the 
appointment of special peace officers, and by the frequent per- 
formance of this particular service, as well as of the other 
duties of the tithing, by the one man who was fast coming 
to represent the activity of the whole group. That the employ- 
ment of special officers rather than groups of men was a more 
effective provision for conserving the peace the legislation 
of Edward I clearly shows. 

Furthermore, even when the tithing had arrested an offend- 
ing member, delivered him up, and duly made presentment of 
his offence, justice was in many cases far from being speedily 
meted out to him. In local matters punishable in the leet, such 
as infraction of the assize of bread and beer, the payment of a 
small semiannual amercement really served as a license; and 
in more serious cases there was undoubtedly a corresponding 
miscarriage of justice. In the time of Henry III the eyres of 
the justices were so infrequent that persons indicted before the 
sheriff for grave crimes were likely to die or to escape before 
they were brought to trial. When in this reign it became 
customary to hold an eyre in a given county no oftener than 
once in seven years, the amercement of a tithing for failure to 
do its duty often became a mere form; for the body that was 
fined might well be made up of altogether different persons 
from those who had defaulted several years before. To remedy 
this defect, Edward I developed the plan of sending out justices 
of assize under special commissions, without waiting for the 
long period of the eyre to come round ; but even this plan was 

1 Assize Rolls, No. 11, mm. 23, 236 (Bedford, 15 Edw. I); No. 926, mm. 34, 
346 (Sussex, 6 Edw. I). 



154 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

still inadequate. Then for a time special commissions were 
issued to justices of trailbaston to try offenders/ an experiment 
which may be taken as showing the failure of the tourn 
system 2 and the search for a more efficient mode of restraining 
and punishing criminal impulses. After various laws had been 
passed in the course of another half -century, — among them 
one in 1340 attempting to secure more competent bailiffs in 
all hundreds, 3 and another in 1350 requiring local justices to 
make sessions in all counties four times a year to enforce the 
Statute of Labourers, 4 — it was finally in 1360 decided to try 
the plan of making three or four such justices in each county 
direct commissioners of the crown with power to hear all cases 
of felony and misdemeanor. 5 According to a statute of 1362, 
these "justices of the peace and of labourers" were to make 
sessions four times a year. 6 Thus was established a system of 
bringing to trial offenders against the peace which proved so 
efficient that, with some changes in 1387, and especially 
some in 141 5, it has been followed down to the present 
time. 7 

These quarterly sessions in each county soon sapped what 
vitality remained in frankpledge. So long as presentments of 
ordinary offences were made chiefly by the capital pledges in the 
tourn and the leet, it was necessary at least to go through the 
form of putting men in tithings that there might be capital 
pledges; but, when the peace might be maintained through 
courts held by special royal commissioners without any neces- 

1 Pari. Writs, i. 407; Rot. Pari., i. 128. 

2 Nichols, in Archaeologia, xl. pt. i. 94, 100. 

3 Statutes of the Realm, i. 284. 

4 Ibid. 313. 

5 Ibid. 365; Beard, Office of Justice of the Peace, 35-44; Howard, Develop- 
ment of the King's Peace, 37-41. 

6 Statutes of the Realm, i. 374. 

7 Cox, Derbyshire, i. 1. 



DECLINE AND RESULTS 155 

sary attachment to the older local methods of the tourn, 1 the 
capital pledge, with whom the duty of prosecuting crime had 
mainly rested, declined in importance. By 141 5 the justices of 
the peace had gained preference over the sheriff as agents of 
the crown in making inquiry concerning crown interests ; 2 and 
by 1 46 1 the sheriff was by a well-known statute of that year 
required to bring all presentments made in his tourn before the 
justices at their next session, and was even forbidden to make 
arrests on such presentments without process from the justices. 3 
As the new jurisdiction gained at the expense of the older one, 
the heads of tithings tended to lose their national significance 
and to retain importance in local matters only. The decline of 
double presentment at the tourn in its later days seems to show 
that even here the jury of twelve freemen had come to assume 
entire charge of affairs, 4 and hence that the aid of twelve capital 
pledges was no longer required. Such also was the effect of 
creating county governments in some of the boroughs, and of 
holding tourns in which the sheriff appointed the jurors. 5 

As a surety system, frankpledge declined rapidly in the four- 
teenth century. Not only did a dependence upon constables 
and tithingmen to make arrests and lead offenders to prison 
tend to free the tithing from its old duty of producing its mem- 
bers for trial, but the practice of substituting for the justices in 
ewe commissions of gaol delivery, oyer and terminer, and 
justices of the peace displaced the old-time medium through 
which was collected from the tithing the now nominal payment 
for failure to perform such service. It was at the eyre that pre- 
sentment used to be made as to the tithing to which a fugitive 

1 See Bacon, Government of England, 302. 

2 Rot. Pari, iv. 69. 

3 Statutes of the Realm, ii. 390-391. 

4 Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. xxxiv. 

5 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, pp. lxxix, lxxx. 



156 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

belonged; but the records of proceedings before the new com- 
missioners sent out by Edward I show these officers going 
straight to the merits of the cases which they tried. Never is 
there the slightest hint of an attempt to hold a tithing respon- 
sible for a flight. Even before the era of the quarter sessions 
begins it is evident that the maintenance of tithings is really a 
manorial and not a national affair. As the peasants purchased 
exemption from their other servile burdens or secured commu- 
tation of them, it was no longer possible to hold them to the 
ancient obligations of the tithing. In a late eyre for North- 
ampton, held in 1330, there still appears the old form of holding 
tithings responsible for fugitive members ; * but at least as early 
as 1337 a man was able to gain exemption from frankpledge by 
paying the lord of the manor a money fine. 2 In assize rolls of 
the fifteenth century, which two centuries earlier would have 
been sure to mention pledging by the tithings, there is no refer- 
ence to the subject; and more significant still is a decision by 
the King's Bench in 1441, which says that the court leet has 
cognizance of several articles (such as amends of the assize of 
bread and beer) not included in the jurisdiction of the sheriff's 
tourn. 3 This removal of well-known articles of view of frank- 
pledge from the dominion of the tourn is interpreted by no less 
eminent an authority than Fitzherbert as a ruling that the sheriff 
is not to receive presentments of those out of tithing. 4 It seems 
almost certain, therefore, that before the end of the fourteenth 
century men were no longer put in tithing in the tourn. By 
1497 even Chief -justice Fineux of the King's Bench knew noth- 
ing of the former significance of frankpledge. 5 

1 Public Record Office, Assize Roll, No. 632. 

2 Clark, in Eng. Hist. Review, xix. 717. 

3 Year Book, 18 Hen. VI, Trin., pi. 1. 

4 La Graunde Abridgement, pt. iii. fol. 90. 

5 Year Book, 12 Hen. VII, fol. 18. See Manchester Leet Records (Chetham 



DECLINE AND RESULTS 157 

The disappearance of the surety element in the frankpledge 
system by no means prevented more or less observance of its 
forms for centuries more. To declare, as Marquardsen does/ 
that in the time of Henry VI and Edward IV " the last traces of 
frankpledge vanish from English law," is going too far. Powell, 
in the seventeenth century, would say only that the ancient obli- 
gation of every person above the age of twelve to have a pledge 
"by desuetude of time is utterly antiquated "; but some of the 
old functions of the view of frankpledge he recognized as still in 
existence. 2 At an earlier time Lambard even argued in favor 
of restoring to the tithingman his ancient functions, and knew no 
reason why, according to the law as it stood, such a plan might 
not be carried out. 3 After the fifteenth century tithings were still 
maintained both in boroughs and in manorial leets. The tith- 
ing-list, and the presentment of the capital pledges upon the 
articles of the view of frankpledge, were as useful as ever for 
registering the names of residents, and for keeping account of 
persons who left the jurisdiction, as well as of those newly 
arrived. The presentment of offences by the capital pledges 
was always convenient, and was even necessary for the main- 
tenance of the leet when there were not twelve free jurors within 
its precincts. Such a continuance of the old frankpledge organi- 
zation was also useful to the general government, in that it 
helped to keep the peace, provided tithingmen to serve as petty 
constables in the leet as well as under the jurisdiction of the 
justices of the peace, and preserved the medium through which 
the peasantry were sworn to the king's allegiance. Moreover, it 
would appear that the justices of the peace sometimes made use 

Soc), prefatory chapter, p. 7, where Fineux's statements are actually accepted 
as authority. 

1 Marquardsen, Haft, 70. 

2 Powell, Antiquity of the Leet, 18. 

3 Lambard, Constables, 9. 



158 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

of the presentments of the capital pledges; for even at the 
beginning of the seventeenth century the local constable — 
who was but the lineal successor of the old head of the tithing, 
and was still called borsholder, tithingman, or headbourow * — 
was bound either to attend quarter sessions or to pay a fine, and 
had the right to present anything that in his opinion demanded 
the attention of the court. 2 Practical utility thus combined with 
British conservatism to keep alive parts of a defunct organism. 

Many survivals of the frankpledge system are to be found in 
England as late as the nineteenth century. When in the fif- 
teenth century it ceased to be customary to enroll men in sep- 
arate tithings for the same manor, the peasants belonging to 
the rural leet and to the lower classes in the borough leet were 
entered by name upon a roll, and by taking the oath of fealty 
were sworn into this "tithing of the lord king." 3 Such a swear- 
ing and enrolment of those above the age of twelve was con- 
tinued as late as the seventeenth century. 4 This practice facili- 
tated the tracing of vagrants and of suspected and undesirable 
persons, and the exclusion of them from a community; for no 
person was allowed to remain more than a year in a place un- 
less he were sworn in court and had his name entered upon the 
court rolls. In the seventeenth century such a formal reception 
of men in ward was revived in London as a means of detecting 



1 Lambard, Constables, g. 

2 Willis-Bund, Quarter Sessions Rolls (Worcestersh. Hist. Soc), i. 133, ii. 
p. xcviii; Cox, Derbyshire, i. 104; Atkinson, Quarter Sessions Records (North 
Riding Record Soc), i. 200. Powell {Antiquity of the Leet, 17), speaking from 
the standpoint of his time, represents presentments in the tourn and leet as 
originally made by constables and petty constables. 

3 Young, Dulwich College, ii. 281, 282; Maurer, Saxon Mark Courts, 34; 
L. T. Smith, Common-place Book, 160. 

4 Powell, Antiquity of the Leet, 19. In Kitchin's Le Court Leete, fol. 51, men 
are fined for living within the precinct of a view of frankpledge for a year with- 
out taking the oath of allegiance to the queen. 



DECLINE AND RESULTS 159 

religious dissenters, 1 and those sworn were said to be in frank- 
pledge. By the early part of this century the swearing into the 
king's obedience of the young men and youths who had lived 
in the town a year and a day had been discontinued in South- 
ampton, a circumstance which the leet jury complained of in 
1 61 5, but did nothing farther about than to refer the matter 
to the steward of the court. 2 The making of burgesses in the 
leet courts, in this century and the early part of the next one, 3 
answered a purpose similar to that of receiving men into ma- 
norial tithings. 

Even more persistent than enrolment in tithing was the elec- 
tion of capital pledges. From the first years of the fifteenth 
century to the last years of the seventeenth, it is possible to 
trace in the same court leet the appointment of these minor 
officials in the same way and their performance of practically 
the same duties. 4 The man who after his election to the office 
of headbourow in 1660 refused to be sworn was fined just as 
was his predecessor at the head of a tithing three centuries 
earlier, only he was fined several times as heavily. 5 In parts 
of Derbyshire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there were 
elected for each township at annual courts leet one or more 
presentment jurors, usually from two to six, who collectively 
were called the frankpledge. 6 In the reign of Henry VII the 
tithingmen of eight tithings of the stannary of Blackmore ap- 
peared with their tithings in the hundred of Powder to do suit 
and to present criminals. 7 The heads of tithings, who in the 

1 Stow, Survey of London, 671. 

2 Davies, Southampton, 234. 

3 Griffith, Records of Huntingdon, 49. 

4 Young, Dulwich College, ii. 281-320. 

5 Ibid. 317. 

B Yeatman, Feudal History of Derby, § vi. 340-389, 429. 

7 Public Record Office, Court Rolls of Stannaries, Bundle 157, No. 13. 



160 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

reign of Edward I served virtually as petty constables, from 
the time of Edward III served regularly in the same capacity 
in connection with the jurisdiction of justices of the peace. 1 In 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries these officials were 
variously known as borsholders, tithingmen, headboroughs, 
and thirdboroughs. This last term Lambard explains by as- 
serting that in shires in which every third community had a con- 
stable the officers of the other two were called " third borrows," 
an explanation in which he is perhaps correct, notwithstanding 
the fact that he makes the usual error of identifying the head- 
borgh with the borough. 2 When there were several head- 
boroughs in one township or parish, only one of them acted as 
constable for the king, the others serving merely as manorial 
tithingmen. 3 Legal theory in the time of Lambard held that 
the justices of the peace had power to remove insufficient con- 
stables and borsholders and to appoint capable persons in their 
places, 4 — so far had the power of the justices undermined that 
of the leet. In some of the towns headboroughs continued to 
be appointed until 1835, serving as inspectors of weights and 
measures and in other minor capacities. 5 The tithingman without 
a tithing continued to act as a regular peace officer of the realm 
until 1839, when an act of Parliament left parochial constables 
the only ones to be appointed in the old way. 8 A further act of 
1842 provided that "no petty constable, borsholder, tithingman, 

1 Lambard, Constables, 9; Simpson, "The Office of Constable," in Eng. 
Hist. Review, x. 625-641. 

2 Cox, Derbyshire, i. 109; Cox and Markham, Records of Northampton, i. 
140-141. Cox's objection to the statement seems not to be well grounded, 
except as to the confusion of borgh with borough. 

3 Lambard, Constables, 9. 

4 Ibid. 18. 

5 Cox and Markham, Records of Northampton, ii. 142; Hudson, Leet Juris- 
diction in Norwich, p. lxxiii. 

6 2-3 Victoria, c. 93. 



DECLINE AND RESULTS 161 

or peace officer of like description" should "be appointed for 
any parish, township, or vill within the limits of this act, except 
for the performance of duties unconnected with the preservation 
of the peace," * and thus unequivocally took from this official 
duties which he had performed for more than seven centuries. 

Finally, view of frankpledge as a name for the leet has been 
perpetuated to the present time, the jurisdiction sometimes 
existing in the nineteenth century in practically the same form 
as in the seventeenth. 2 Its functions have, however, been so far 
suspended by constabulary and local government acts that the 
mere name of an attenuated form of court is the last remaining 
relic of a system which once required all Englishmen of the 
lower classes to be in frankpledge suretyship. 3 

Frankpledge, with the arrangements for its maintenance, 
had in its day a profound influence in several directions. Viewed 
from the economic standpoint, it occasioned the collection of 
considerable sums of money from the peasants in addition to 
those which they already paid to their lords. It was, no doubt, 
on this ground that the Great Charter of 121 7 fixed the sheriff's 
view of frankpledge after Michaelmas, when the crops were 
harvested and it was easiest to collect amercements and dues 
from the tillers of the soil. In addition to what went to the lord, 
the sheriff thus stepped in to claim some part of the harvest; 
or, if the lord held his own view of frankpledge, he took a larger 
share on this account. 

The sums that were collected through the frankpledge system 

1 5-6 Victoria, c. 109. 

2 See Crofton, History of Newton Chapelry (Chetham Soc), ii. pt. i. 84. 
Hearnshaw (Leet Jurisdiction in England, 248-321) gives information concern- 
ing some 220 courts leet in England and Wales, nearly all of which were in 
existence in 1835. 

3 For an account of the court leet still held at Southampton, see Hearnshaw, 
Leet Jurisdiction, Introd. 

11 



162 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

in a given hundred year in and year out were considerable. The 
usual amercement of half a mark laid by the king's justices 
upon the tithing which had allowed a fugitive member to escape, 
or upon the township which had received a man without frank- 
pledge, came only at irregular intervals upon certain tithings 
and certain townships; but the penny collected from every 
man placed in frankpledge, and the payment at view of frank- 
pledge of at least a penny, sometimes of two pence, for every 
man in tithing, ' were regular features of the system. Further- 
more, the associates of the tithing seem ordinarily to have been 
required to pay an amercement for not attending the view in 
person, or else to make a regular payment in commutation of 
this duty, a plan which amounted to very much the same thing, 
though the sum paid under the latter arrangement was some- 
what smaller. Suit of tourn in the time of Edward I is the name 
not so much of a duty of the peasant as of a financial asset of 
the king. When, as often happened, the lord paid annually to 
the sheriff a sum varying usually from twenty to a very few 
shillings for the right of holding his view of frankpledge, the 
peasants were likely to be required to make up this amount to 
the lord. The lord, moreover, as well as the king, collected 
a sum fixed by custom "for frankpledge," a practice which, 
as has been observed, seems originally to have been justified 
on the ground that the money thus raised was required to meet 
the expense of holding the view. In the Staffordshire hundred 
of Seisdon in 1255 at least half of the tenants seem to have 
made such payments, the amounts here ranging from six pence 
up to six shillings and eight pence a year. 1 Sometimes the 
bailiff illegally exacted such a payment where it had not been 
made before, 2 or arbitrarily increased the usual amount, 3 as 

1 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, v. pt. i. 110-116. 

a See Rot. Hundred., i. 486. 3 Ibid. 138. 



DECLINE AND RESULTS 163 

both he and the sheriff were tempted to do under the plan of 
farming hundreds and counties. Moreover, the capital pledge 
was subject to fine for certain irregularities on his part, varying 
in gravity from concealment of offences that ought to have 
been presented, or failure to have his men present when re- 
quired, down to appearance before the dignified bailiff without 
removing his hat. 1 

The perquisites derived from view of frankpledge of course 
included all the amercements collected at the tourn for in- 
fraction of the peace in minor points or for violation of ma- 
norial usage. In a Staffordshire hundred in 1275 the amount of 
all such perquisites was estimated to be one hundred shillings 
a year. 2 In the thirteenth century the payments from view of 
frankpledge in eight hundreds in Warwickshire and Leicester- 
shire made up almost forty-two pounds of the sheriff's annual 
ferm. In Hertfordshire a single hundred often paid from 
twenty to forty shillings. In Bedfordshire and Buckingham- 
shire together the amount from the same source aggregated 
almost forty pounds for one year. 3 When one adds to these 
payments various arbitrary and illegal exactions made upon 
the tithings and tithingmen in the time of Edward I, amounting 
sometimes to as much as one hundred shillings, it will readily 
be perceived that the frankpledge system oftentimes meant 
nothing less than a means of exploiting the peasants in the 
name of public peace. 

Socially frankpledge was a mark of inferiority, except per- 
haps in the boroughs. It was, as has been seen, an instrument 
well adapted to enforce the servile obligations, and even the 
servile status, of the unfree manorial tenant. It was because 

1 See Rot. Hundred., ii. 214. 

2 Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, vi. pt. i. 69. 

3 Red Book of the Exchequer (Rolls Series), ii. 775-777. 



1 64 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

those who made up the tithings were usually villains that it was 
easy to make exactions of them, and to increase the obligations 
of the tithing and the tithingman until the load became exces- 
sively burdensome. The man in tithing had, however, one ad- 
vantage : when he was accused of crime he could show that he 
was no vagrant, 1 and thus could claim whatever slight leniency 
was due him from this fact. 2 From the beginning of the early 
twelfth century, as Liebermann has well observed, legal compe- 
tence depended on membership in frankpledge. 3 Even the 
despised approver might make appeals of felony, providing he 
was "one faithful and in frankpledge" and had a lord who 
would avow him. 4 The system at least bore testimony that a 
person had some sort of standing in the community. 

Judged from the collective rather than the individual point 
of view, frankpledge was an institution that helped to keep 
alive medieval local exclusiveness and to foster a narrow spirit 
of local selfishness. Attendance at the view of frankpledge for 
the hundred was not likely to take the peasant far from the 
manor; and when the lord held his own view the community, 
as Pollock and Maitland point out, rejoiced in the fact that "no 
tale went outside the manor to the ears of jealous neighbours 
or rapacious officials." 5 Such a protection of self-interest 
meant just the reverse of public spirit. The whole system was 
based on human selfishness. The tithing pursued its associate 
to avoid paying a fine; the capital pledge presented in court 
the offences of his neighbors for the same motive; and the 
whole community quickly reported the person who received a 
stranger on the manor, lest the newcomer commit an offence 

1 Maurer, Saxon Mark Courts, 32. 

2 See Bracton's Note Book, iii. 563; Salt Archaeol. Soc, Collections, iii. 43. 

3 Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edw. Con/., 82. 

4 Bracton, fol. 152, ii. 522. 

5 English Law (1895), *■ 5^8. 



DECLINE AND RESULTS 165 

and the vill be amerced for receiving him out of tithing. Under 
the practical continuance of this state of affairs through residency 
registration at the leet even after frankpledge itself was gone, 
there was thus a tendency toward that spirit of village selfishness 
which in the days of the Poor Laws often made against a new 
arrival a hypocritical accusation of moral unfitness for member- 
ship in the community, not because of any deep-seated regard for 
personal morality, but from a selfish fear lest some personal lia- 
bility might arise through the newcomer's residence in the parish. 

Against this disregard for the rights of the common man, and 
this fostering of local narrowness and selfishness, one has to set 
to the credit of the system political and constitutional results 
of a far better character. In an age of feudal confusion it was the 
agency through which the king claimed the direct allegiance 
of the great body of Englishmen. Frankpledge, moreover, 
at least after 1166, supplied the means of making men realize 
what that allegiance meant, by bringing the power of the king's 
government to bear directly on the individual. With all its 
imperfections considered as a constabulary system, with its 
clumsiness and disregard for the lower classes, frankpledge 
seems, nevertheless, to have secured in an effective manner the 
observance of the king's peace by the peasants of England, 
until at the end of the thirteenth century the plan failed because 
of a changed standard of economic values, as well as through 
its own tendency to emphasize the place of the capital pledge and 
through an inefficient system of gaol delivery. Even the money 
that was unequally exacted of the peasants through the institu- 
tion went, not, like most of the other payments made by them, 
merely to add to seigniorial power, but usually to strengthen 
the royal hand, which could establish good government. 

Considered from the constitutional point of view, the frank- 
pledge system was an invaluable part of the framework of 



166 THE FRANKPLEDGE SYSTEM 

medieval English government. After the issue of the Assize of 
Clarendon and seigniorial imitation of the forms used in the 
sheriff's tourn, the view of frankpledge practically determined 
the mode of local administration followed by the greater part 
of the realm in town as well as in country. 1 Furthermore, as 
Stubbs shows, frankpledge constituted one form of representa- 
tive system, the capital pledge and part of the tithing often as- 
suming the old duty of the reeve and four in appearing for the 
township. 2 In this way the ordinary man became familiar with 
the workings both of the manorial and of the royal government 
of the county ; for the tithings and the capital pledges appeared 
before the royal justices in eyre, as well as before the manorial 
steward, the bailiff of the hundred, or the sheriff of the shire. 
To quote Vinogradoff, frankpledge was in Norman days a 
" conspicuous link between both sections of society, . . . [ con- 
necting] the subjugated population with the hundred court, 
which is the starting-point of free judicial organisation." 3 It 
was, therefore, in no small degree due to the operation of the 
system of frankpledge that the masses of the English people 
learned not only how to carry on their own local affairs, but also 
how to aid the king's officers in the royal government of the 
shires. Such acquaintance of the masses with matters of ad- 
ministration and justice, and especially such participation in 
them, have made possible Anglo-Saxon self-government. 

1 In the sixteenth century the court leet not only enforced police regulations 
in towns, but also actually made such regulations. Thus in 1592 the jurors at 
Bermondsey in Surrey present that there be "no casting forth of dust or soil on 
Saturday afternoon by the inhabitants of Bell alley " (Public Record Office, 
Court Rolls, Bundle 126, No. 1868 C). At Southwark in 1658 general orders 
and by-laws appear to have been made in the same way (see British Museum, 
Additional Charter, No. 36793, fol. 17). 

8 Constitutional History, i. 95. 3 Villainage, 66. 



APPENDICES 



APPENDICES 

APPENDIX A 

ROYAL WRIT FOR HOLDING VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE, 1218 1 

De atachiamentis pertinentibus ad coronam, et aliis. Rex omnibus 
militibus, libere tenentibus et aliis de hundredo de Ferendon, salutem. 
Mandamus vobis, firmiter precipientes, quod, sicut vos et omnia 
vestra diligitis, veniatis ad diem et ad locum vobis assignatos a vice- 
comite nostro Berkesire, ad ostendendum eidem vicecomiti, ad tur- 
num suum, placita et attachiamenta, que pertinent ad coronam 
nostram, coram coronatoribus comitatus ejusdem ad hoc assignatis; 
et ad ostendendum eidem vicecomiti visum franci plegii secundum 
quod fieri solet temporibus H. regis, avi nostri, et R. regis, avunculi 
nostri, et J. regis, patris nostri. Et in hujus etc. Teste comite, 
apud Farendon, vj. die Marcii, anno regni nostri secundo. 

Eodem modo scribitur omnibus etc. de hundredo de Waneting, 
et omnibus etc. de hundredo de Lamburn. 



APPENDIX B 

OATH OF PERSONS PUT UNDER FRANKPLEDGE IN LONDON, 
FOURTEENTH CENTURY 2 

Serement de ceux qi serrount mys dessouz Franc Plegge. 

Vous jurrez qe vous serrez foialx et loialx au Roy d'Engleterre et 
a sez heires, Rois, et la peas du Roi garderez ; et as ministres de la 
citee obeisante serrez, et as toutz heurez, qe mestiere soit, prestez 

1 Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 1216-1225, p. 141. 

2 Liber Albus (ed. Riley, Rolls Series), i. 315. 

169 



170 APPENDICES 

serrez deydere lez ministf es darrester lez meffesours et disobeysantes 
a la pees le Roi, sibien privez come estraunges. Et prestz serrez, al 
gamissement dez Cones tables et Bedelles, pur faire lez gaytes et 
autres charges pur la sauf garde de la peas, et toutz lez poyntz en cest 
Wardemot monstrez, solonc vostre poiare bien et loialment tendrez. 
Et si savez ascun male covyne deinz la Garde ou la citee, vous le 
destourbrez ou a vostre Alderman assavoir ferrez — si Dieu vous 
eide, et lez Seintz. 

APPENDIX C 

TITHING-LIST AT HARSTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, IN THE 
REIGN OF RICHARD II 1 

Hardeleston 
Capitales plegii cum decenariis 
Johannes Bole Johannes Aleyne 

Johannes Baldewyne 
Johannes R.eynald quia mortuus 2 
Thomas Willesson 
*Nicholaus Alnene 3 

Johannes filius Thome Taillour 

Johannes Walssheman 
* Johannes Aleyne junior mortuus est 

Johannes Strong quia mortuus 
- Rogerus — fifos — ThomG — Adam amotus 
propter festum, ijd. 

Johannes Smyth 

Johannes filius Ricardi Wrighte 
* Johannes filius Johannis Cokkeshed 

Johannes Toteneye 

Johanncc Dun 

Johannes Coupere 

Henricu s Merymouth quia mortuus 

1 British Museum, Additional Charter, No. 18526. 

3 In the manuscript such words are written above the name. 

* The asterisks are in the original list, but their meaning is not apparent. 



APPENDICES 



171 



mortuus est 
Johannes Cokk e^be& 
Willelmus Lucas 



Johannes Strong quia mortuus 

Johannes Lucas clerk 

•Thom as Alnene quia mortuus 

Thomas Tepdyn 

Robertus Tepelyn mortuus est 

Johannes Bangil Shepherd 
* Johannes filius Johannis clerk 

-Th omas filius Radulphi Walssheman quia 

mortuus est 
* Johannes Pycard Junior 

Johannes filius Johannis Wryghte 

Johannes Hygyn 

Johannes Walssheman junior 
*Augustinus Wyltons junior 

Johannes Lucas 

Joha nnes Warde quia mortuus 

Willelmus Lucas quia capitalis plegius 



Johannes Pycard 



• Willelmus Taylour quia mortuus 
Johanneo Godyng . 



Johannes Wrighte 
mortuus Wright 
Johannes Bole 



Willelmus Dun 

Johannes filius Roberti de Bery 

• Robertus de Eery quia mortuus 

Johannes Prat 

Willelmus Everesdon mortuus est 

Thomas Prat 

Thomas Warde 

Thomas Ricard quia mortuus 



Johannes Godyng 



Johannes filius Willelmi Godyng quia 
mortuus 



172 



APPENDICES 



mortuus 
Nigellus Sturtugga Johannes Godyng quia mortuus 
Johannes Say 



Robertus Lucas 



Willelmus filius Roberti Godyng 
Johannes Urney junior mortuus est 
Augustinus Godyng 
Thomas Lucas 

Willelmus Rycard mortuus est 
- WillclmuG Dassh quia mortuus 
Willolmuo Rylonc - amotus propter festum 
Willelmus Lucas 



APPENDIX D 



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182 APPENDICES 

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1 84 APPENDICES 

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INDEX 



INDEX 



Adisham, borg of, exactions upon, 95. 

Age, as qualification for membership 
in frankpledge, 70-71, 113, 131. 

Albrighton, manor of, view of frank- 
pledge held by prescription in, 54. 

Alfred, king of the West Saxons, er- 
roneously regarded as founder of 
frankpledge, 6-7, 34 ; laws of, 8-9. 

Ambresbury, prioress of, right of 
entry reserved in royal charter to, 
144. 

Arrest, of criminals by tithings, 96-98. 

Articuli supra Cartas, complaint in, as 
to peace observance, 151. 

Assize, justices of, 153-154; effects of 
commissions of, on frankpledge, 
155-156. 

Assize of Clarendon, provisions con- 
cerning view of frankpledge, 40; 
gives no intimation of non-existence 
of frankpledge in parts of realm, 
43-44; beginning-point of tourn, 
117-118. 

Assize rolls, evidence of, as to dis- 
tribution of frankpledge, 42, 46-48, 
50-51, 62 n. 4, 65, 67. 

Athelstan, laws of, 17, and n. 4; 18- 
21, 24. 

Bail, confused with frankpledge, 3. 

Bailiff, irregularities of, in tourn, 120- 
121; presence of royal, at leet, 141- 
144. 

Barel, Roger, failure to produce main- 
past, 84. 

Basset brothers, appealed for crime, 
97. 

Bateson, Mary, discovery as to 
maegth obligation, 21-22. 



Bermondsey, ordinances of court leet 
at, 166 n. 1. 

Blackmore, stannary of, suit of hun- 
dred by tithings of, 159. 

Bocherville, abbey of St. George of, 
charter mentioning mainpast, 81-82. 

Bohun, Earl Humphrey, claim to 
view of frankpledge, 54 n. 4; for- 
feits view of frankpledge, 143. 

Borg (borgha), designation for frank- 
pledge tithing, 86. 

Borh, Anglo-Saxon, relationship to 
Anglo-Saxon tithing, 14-15; sig- 
nificance and origin, 15-17; supple- 
mented by maegth, 17-19; develop- 
ment, 19; the borh group, 19-20; 
the lord as borh pledge, 20; the 
maegth group of twelve, 21-22; 
prevalence of collective borh, 22-23; 
decline of maegth suretyship, 24-25; 
comparison of borh with frank- 
pledge, 25-27; maintained through 
hundred court, 26, 112; fusion of 
borh and tithing, 27-29, 33; prob- 
able absence from certain districts, 
32, 56-59; reorganized by William 
the Conqueror, 35-36; supervision 
by Norman kings, 39-40; qualifi- 
cations to general rule of member- 
ship in, 69, 72, 75; brings freemen 
into frankpledge, 77; duties com- 
pared with those of frankpledge 
tithing, 96, 98. 

Borhsealdor, the head of a Kentish 
tithing, 93, 99, 103. 

Boroughs, frankpledge in, 61-63. 

Borsholder, successor to the capital 
pledge, 160. 

Borth-selver, payment of, 150. 



1 88 



INDEX 



Bracton, Henry de, uses word frank- 
pledge for mainpast, 4 n. 1, 80; 
gives rule as to royal rights in view 
of frankpledge, 40; evidence con- 
cerning customs of Welsh marches, 
57 n. 1; rule concerning member- 
ship in frankpledge, 70; concerning 
exemptions from frankpledge, 71- 
72, 74; opinion as to oath taken at 
view of frankpledge, 71; definition 
of mainpast, 79-80; statements 
concerning right of royal officials 
as to view of frankpledge, 143- 
144. 

Bristol, view of frankpledge at, 61, 
148 n. 8. 

Britton, states law as to exemption 
of knights from frankpledge, 74; 
theory that women are in mainpast, 
81; an authority on tourn proce- 
dure, 119; statements as to suitors 
at tourn, 122; as to attendance of 
capital pledges, 123. 

Brooke, responsibility of borg on 
lands of prior of, 93-94. 

Bury St. Edmunds, provision for 
frankpledge maintenance in royal 
charter to abbot of, 60 n. 1; en- 
rolment in frankpledge at, 150. 

Caernarvonshire, view of frank- 
pledge in (1370), name of jurisdic- 
tion only, 43. 

Calehill, hundred of, Kent, complaint 
as to election of head of tithing, 103. 

Calne, view of frankpledge at, as 
widow's dower, 148 n. 8. 

Cambridge, county of, frankpledge 
in, 60. 

Cambridge university, students ex- 
empt from frankpledge, 75. 

Canterbury, freemen in frankpledge, 
77; prior of Christ Church makes 
exaction upon borg of Adisham, 95; 
abbot of St. Augustine's prevents 
freemen from being in frankpledge 
in city, 102. 

Canute, not originator of frank- 
pledge, 29-30, 34. 



Canute, laws of, as to tithing, 11, 28 w. 
1; relation of borh to tithing, 13-15; 
the lord borh for his household, 20, 
79; provision for borh of discredited 
persons, 22, 24-25; contrast borh 
provisions with frankpledge, 27; 
set aside in Yorkshire by Earl Tos- 
tig, 58-59. 

Capital pledge, early use of term, 32 
n. 1; various designations for, 103; 
election of, 103-105, 110; duties of, 
105-111; attendance at view of 
frankpledge, 123, 128; origin of 
presentments by, 124-125; twelve 
capital pledges considered essential 
to a leet, 140; attendance at man- 
orial leet, 145-146; at borough leet, 
150; late maintenance and decline 
of the ofiice, 159-161. 

Cert money, payment by tithings, 
101-102. 

Channel Islands, no mention of frank- 
pledge in records of, 42. 

Cheshire, county of, tithings probably 
not responsible for fugitives in, 48 
n. 1; probable absence of frank- 
pledge in, 53, and n. 2. 

Cheswardine, in Shropshire, view of 
frankpledge claimed at, 54 n. 4. 

Cigony, Engelard de, makes exaction 
on tithing of Tetbury, 96. 

Cirencester, abbot of, provision as to 
view of frankpledge in charter to, 
129 n. 2. 

Clergy, exempt from frankpledge, 74- 
75. 

Clifton, manor of, presentments by 
capital pledges of, 108. 

Codex Diplomaticus, fails to mention 
frankpledge, 6. 

Colchester, definition of frithsoken in 
charter to monks of St. John of, 
134 n. 3. 

Constables, petty, as successors of 
capital pledges, 158. 

Constitutional results of frankpledge, 
165-166. 

Coote, H. C, theory as to Roman 
origin of frankpledge, 4. 



INDEX 



189 



Custodes pads, capital pledges act 
as, 106, and n. 8. 

Custody, of captured criminals, obli- 
gation of tithings for, 93-96. 

Deodand, responsibility of tithings 

for, 99. 
Dozen (douzaine), designation for 

tithing, 29, 87-88; not tenth of 

long hundred, 87 n. 4. 
Dudley, Worcestershire, a freeman of, 

not in frankpledge, 77. 
Durham, county of, an asylum for 

fugitives, 47; to urn first mentioned 

in fourteenth century, 48-49; failure 

of records to mention frankpledge, 

48 n. 1. 

Easter, date for holding view of 
frankpledge, 118, 120, 127. 

Eboracenses, 51, 52 n. 5. 

Edgar, laws of, 11, 13 n. 1, 19; pro- 
visions for government of north, 
58. 

Edmund, borh laws of, 19-22, 79. 

Edward the Confessor. See Leges 
Edwardi Confessoris. 

Edward the Elder, borh law of, 17. 

Englishry, presentment of, not made 
in Westmoreland, 51; or in York- 
shire, 52. 

Essoins, for absence from tourn, 124. 

Ethelred, laws of, as to tithingmen, 11, 

12 n. 1; borh, 20, 22, 24, 27; essential 
features of mainpast, 79. 

Exemption from frankpledge obliga- 
tions, because of age, 70; itinerancy, 
71-72; rank, 72; order, 74; property, 
75; status, 76-78; physical or men- 
tal disability, 78-79; mainpast, 
79-80; exemption of women, 81, 
and n. 1. 

Eyre, jurisdiction of, over frank- 
pledge, 40-41 ; enforcement of frank- 
pledge obligations, 91-93; effect of 
infrequent eyres upon frankpledge 
system, 153; in Northampton, 1330, 
still enforces responsibility of tith- 
ings, 156. 



Failure, of frankpledge, 151-156. 

Finieux, chief justice, did not under- 
stand frankpledge, 156. 

Finlason, W. F., theory as to Roman 
origin of frankpledge, 4. 

Fleta, statement concerning tourn 
procedure, 123. 

Forests, certain, exempt from frank- 
pledge, 63. 

Frankpledge. See features by name, 
and table of contents. 

Friborg, freoborg, or frithborg, origin 
and etymology, 2; error of mistak- 
ing borh for, 3; the name as argu- 
ment for Anglo-Saxon origin of 
frankpledge, 33. 

Frithgegildan. See Gegildan. 

Frithgild, 10-11. 

Frithsoken, probable conveyance of 
view of frankpledge by grants of, 
134. 

Gegildan, duties and relation to 
frankpledge, 8-9; at London, 10. 

Geneat, suretyship of the, 17. 

Gneist, Dr. Rudolf, explains early 
use of term frankpledge, 2, and n. 5; 
adopts Anglo-Norman theory of 
origin of frankpledge, 8; explains 
origin of frankpledge tithing, 37, 
and n. 4. 

Godborg, 16. 

Green, John Richard, view concerning 
Anglo-Saxon suretyship, 3, 25 n. 3; 
concerning Harold's authority in 
Northumbria, 59. 

Gross, Prof. Charles, shows that 
gegildan had relatives, 9. 

Guernsey, no reference to frank- 
pledge in, 42. 

Guildford, view of frankpledge at, 
148 n. 8. 

Harston, Cambridgeshire, list of 
tithings at, 170-172. 

Headborough, successor to the capi- 
tal pledge, 160. 

Healey, C. E. H. C, thinks that free- 
men were not in frankpledge, 76 



190 



INDEX 



n. 1; that frankpledge tithings had 
no territorial significance, 90 n. 1. 

Hearnshaw, Prof. F. J. C, belief as 
to origin of view of frankpledge in 
Anglo-Saxon England, 113 n. 3; 
as to holding of Norman view of 
frankpledge by sheriff, 114 fi.l; 
as to early presentments by capital 
pledges, 125, and n. 5. 

Henry I, charter to abbot of Bury St. 
Edmunds (1114-1129) providing 
for frankpledge maintenance, 60 
n. 1; writ to sheriff and bishop of 
Worcester, 114, notes; coronation 
charter maintaining courts as be- 
fore the Conquest, 115. 

laws of. See Leges Henrici. 

Henry II, completes frankpledge 
system, 40-41; introduces jury 
presentment in tourn, 117. 

Hereford, city of, view of frankpledge 
in, 54. 

Herefordshire, non-enforcement of 
frankpledge by royal officials in, 
54; claim of Earl Humphrey Bohun 
to view of frankpledge in three 
vills of, 54 n. 4; frankpledge not 
regularly enforced in, 55; border 
conditions in, affect maintenance 
of frankpledge, 57, and n. 1. 

Hertford, county of, rule as to 
responsibility for mainpast, 84. 

Hiredmen, borh of, 20. 

Hlothaere and Eadric, laws of, 16. 

Hokeday, date of holding leet, 142,148. 

Host, the, as pledge for his guest, 16- 
17, 69, 79, 82-83. 

Hudson, William, conclusions as to 
frankpledge in London, 68 n. 1; 
as to relation of tithing and parish 
at Norwich, 130 n. 1. 

Huncyndon (probably Huns don), 
Derbyshire, extinction of frank- 
pledge at, 64, 77. 

Hundred, the, relation to Anglo- 
Saxon tithing, 12-14; responsibility 
for murder, 30; for robberies, 152. 

Hundred court, maintains borh and 
frankpledge, 26, 112; two special 



sessions a year under Henry 1, 113- 
116 ; as affected by Statute of 
Sheriffs, 121. 
Hundred rolls, record of view of frank- 
pledge in, 45-46, 59, 65-67. 

Idiots, exempt from frankpledge, 78. 
Ilchester, view of frankpledge at, 61, 

and n. 5. 
Ine, laws of, 8, 9, 17, and n. 2. 
Ipswich, time of holding leet at, 148; 

presentments by capital pledges at, 

150. 
Ireland, mainprise probably the only 

form of suretyship in, 43, and 

».l. 
Itinerancy, a ground of exemption 

from frankpledge, 71-72. 

Jersey, no frankpledge in, 42. 
Indicia Civitalis Lundoniae, frithgild 

arrangements of, 10; prices recorded 

in, 28 n. 2. 
Justices of the peace, rise of, 154; 

probably used presentment by 

capital pledges, 157-158. 

Kemble, J. M., views on frankpledge, 
7, 9, 25 n. 3. 

Kent, seventh-century laws of, 16, 
17; local borh law of, 18-21; origina- 
tor of law of mainpast, 79; customs 
of, 78, 99. 

Killcot, vill of, Gloucestershire, ab- 
sence of frankpledge in, 64 n. 1. 

King's Bench, decision of, for a stud- 
ent distrained to serve in tithing, 
75; ruling that tourns are views of 
frankpledge, 142; decision distin- 
guishing between tourn and leet, 156. 

Knights, exempt from frankpledge, 74. 

Lambard, William, favors revival of 
frankpledge, 157; explanation of 
term "thirdborough," 160. 

Lancashire, no sheriff's tourn in, be- 
fore Henry III, 49; court leet in, 
53 n. 2; explanation of absence of 
frankpledge in, 55-57. 



INDEX 



191 



Leet, the manorial, procedure of, 107, 
145-146; significance of, 131; origin 
of, 132; identical in function with 
tourn, 133; seigniorial acquisition 
of leet jurisdiction, 133-136; at- 
tempt to maintain royal rights in, 
136-138; results of the quo war- 
ranto to, 138-140; conditions of 
exercising leet jurisdiction, 140- 
141; sessions, 142; presence of 
royal official at, 142-144; suit of, 
144-145; purely manorial aims sub- 
served by, 147. 

the borough, origin, prevalence, 

and character of, 147-149; various 
plans of, 149; procedure of, 149- 
150; present-day survivals of, 161. 

Leges Edwardi Confessoris, confuse 
friborg with borh, 4 n. 1; compiler of, 
34 n. 8, 52; error as to origin of mur- 
der fine on hundred, 34; as to 
general prevalence of frankpledge, 
44; as to nature of tenmantale, 51- 
53; believed to mention oath 
to observe the peace, 71, 130 n. 4; 
statement as to responsibility of 
tithings for damage by members, 
91; as to judicial power of the capi- 
tal pledge, 105; as to local jurisdic- 
tion of the hundred, 117. 

Leges Henrici, use of plegium liberate, 
2 ; confuse tithing with frankpledge, 
15; compiler of, 35, and n. 1; on 
frankpledge, 39, 40 n. 2. 

Leicester, tithing pence taken at, 150. 

Lepers, exempt from frankpledge, 78- 
79. 

Liebermann, Dr. Felix, shows friborg 
to be original oifrithborg, 2; accepts 
theory of Anglo-Saxon origin of 
frankpledge, 7; discovery as to 
Anglo-Saxon tithingman, 11; con- 
struction of laws of Canute, 15 
n. 3; shows process of origin of 
frankpledge, 27 n. 4; shows con- 
ditions after reign of Canute, 30; 
view as to date of organization of 
frankpledge, 30 n. 1, 33; as to 
identity of tenmantale with frank- 



pledge payment, 52 n. 5; observa- 
tion concerning legal competence 
and frankpledge, 164. 

Lincoln, bishop of, claim to view of 
frankpledge at Newark, 148 n. 8. 

London, Anglo-Saxon tithing in, 10- 
11; frankpledge in, 62 n. 4, 68, 
and n. 1; requirement of lorimer's 
gild that members be in frank- 
pledge, 77-78; frankpledge divisions 
at, 149; oath of frankpledge at, 150, 
169-170; revival of ward at, seven- 
teenth century, 158-159. 

Lordship, as factor in Anglo-Saxon 
borh system, 17-20, 22-23. 



Maegth, relation to gegildan, 9; 
suretyship through, 10; relation to 
origin of borh, 16-18; suretyship 
responsibility of, 20-22; decline of, 
24-25; the king as maegth for 
strangers, 30. 

Magna Carta, of 1215, provisions 
concerning sheriffs and bailiffs, 121. 

of 1217, effect in preventing ex- 
tension of frankpledge, 49-50, 56; 
provisions for holding view of 
frankpledge, 64, 65; statement as 
to purpose of tourn, 117; provision 
as to its sessions, 118, 142. 

Magnates, responsibility of, for surety- 
ship of dependents, 73, 74. 

Mainpast, relationship to frankpledge, 
3, 4, and n. 2; persons in, exempt 
from frankpledge, 79; origin of, 
79; definition of, 80; question 
whether women were in, 81; of 
churchmen, 81-82; strangers in, 
82-83; domestics in, 82-84; modi- 
fication of the law in local custom, 
84; persons in mainpast might be 
in frankpledge, 84; controlled by 
view of frankpledge, 128, 130-131. 

Mainpernors, 90, 92; tithings as main- 
pernors for individuals, 94, 99, 101; 
for vills, 99. 

Maitland, Prof. F. W., belief in theory 
of Anglo-Saxon origin of frank- 
pledge, 7; view as to influence of 



192 



INDEX 



lordship upon borh, 23, 30 n. 1; 
as to absence of frankpledge in 
north, 46; as to development of 
view of frankpledge, 53 n. 2, 107, 
115; as to origin of the tourn, 118. 

Manchester, court leet at, fourteenth 
century, 53 n. 2. 

Marquardsen, Heinrich, belief in 
theory of Anglo-Norman origin of 
frankpledge, 8; error concerning 
heorthfest and folgere in borh law of 
Canute, 15 n. 1; argument as to 
impossibility of existence of frank- 
pledge beside borh, 26, and n. 5; 
error concerning disappearance of 
frankpledge in fifteenth century, 157. 

Marshal, William, forbids imprison- 
ment in Gloucester Castle, 95. 

Martinmas. See Michaelmas. 

Maurer, Konrad, views on frank- 
pledge, 9 n. 8, 11 11. 2. 

Membership in frankpledge, classes 
included, 84-85; proportion of 
population included, 85-86. 

Michaelmas, time for holding view of 
frankpledge, 118, 120, 127, 142, 148; 
probable reason for requirement, 
161. 

Mickletorn, at Nottingham, 149. 

Miller, Peter, of Eton, head of a tith- 
ing bound to produce an accused 
person at Westminster, 94. 

Mirror of Justices, in error concerning 
origin of frankpledge, 6; doubtful 
statement that clerks must be in 
frankpledge, 75; in error as to in- 
clusion of women in frankpledge, 
81 n. 1; statement as to classes 
exempt from frankpledge, 83; as 
to exemptions from suit of tourn, 
122; as to essoins, 124; as to articles 
of view of frankpledge, 126. 

Murder fine (murdrum), 30-31,34, 36; 
upon vills, 37; absence of, in Shrop- 
shire, 51, and n.2; in Westmore- 
land, 51; in Yorkshire, 52. 

Newark, view of frankpledge at, 148 
«.8. 



Normandy, probably no frankpledge 
in, 42. 

North Erpingham, hundred of, crime 
in, 152. 

Northumberland, no mention of frank- 
pledge in, 47-48; sheriff's tourn first 
held in, middle of thirteenth cen- 
tury, 48, 49. 

Norwich, free burghers of, in frank- 
pledge, 77; territorial grouping of 
tithings at, 130 n. 1, 149. 

Nottingham, capital pledges of, as 
custodes pads, 106 n. 8; court of 
the honor of Peverell at, 108; 
mickletorn at, 149. 

Oath, of persons put in frankpledge, 
39, 70-71, 113, 130, 147; at Lon- 
don, 169-170. 

Oxford, bishop of, rights at Westing- 
ton, 110. 

Oxford, frankpledge grouping at, 130 
n. 1, 149. 

Palgrave, Sir Francis, shows absence 
of frankpledge from certain dis- 
tricts, 44, 50-51; views as to regions 
thus affected, 44, 64; doubts exist- 
ence in north, 47. 

Payments connected with frankpledge, 
41, 92, 95-96, 99-100, 101-103, 108- 
110, 115, 150, 161-163. 

Pentecost, view of frankpledge held 
at, 148. 

Peverell, honor of, court at Notting- 
ham, 108. 

Philip "la prophete," a capital pledge, 
attempts to shirk duty, 110. 

Pipe rolls, evidence of, as to distribu- 
tion of frankpledge, 46, 67. 

Political results of frankpledge, 165. 

Pollock and Maitland, view as to 
northern limit of frankpledge, 51; 
as to origin of capital-pledge pre- 
sentments, 124-125; as to exclusive- 
ness of manorial leet, 164. 

Powder, hundred of, suit of court at, 
159. 



INDEX 



193 



Presentment at view of frankpledge, 
128-129, 145-146; late retention of, 
by capital pledges, 157-158. 

Prevalence of frankpledge, in thirty 
counties, 59-68. 

Property, freehold, as ground of ex- 
emption from frankpledge, 72, 75. 

Quarter sessions, beginnings and 

rise of, 154-155. 
Quo warranto rolls, evidence of, as to 

prevalence of frankpledge, 45-46, 

59, 64-67. 

Ramsay, Sir James, views as to tithing 
of Canute, 15 ». 1; as to voluntary 
character of borh, 27 ». 1; as to 
royal power in north and west be- 
fore the Conquest, 59. 

Ramsey, abbot of, view of frank- 
pledge granted to, 143, 144 ». 6. 

Rank, exemption from frankpledge 
because of, 72-74. 

Results of frankpledge, financial, 161- 
163; social, 163-165; political and 
constitutional, 165-166. 

Sake and soke, relation of view of 
frankpledge to grants of, 134. 

Sarum, castle of, imprisonment in, 109. 

Sautcheverel, John, exempt from 
frankpledge, 76. 

Schmid, Reinhold, argument for Anglo- 
Saxon origin of frankpledge, 33. 

Scotland, borh in, means bail, 43. 

Seisdon, hundred of, Staffordshire, 
payments "for frankpledge," 162. 

Sheriff, holds view of frankpledge, 
40, 49, 60, 67, 113-114, 117-122, 
126, 129, 140; directs activity of 
tithings, 97. 

Shropshire, non-enforcement of frank- 
pledge in, 44, 51, 55. 

Smith, Sir Thomas, statement as to 
term of office of petty constables, 
104 n. 2. 

Social effects of frankpledge, 163-165. 

Southampton, time of holding leet at, 
148. 



Southwark, by-laws of court leet at, 
166 ». 1. 

St. Giles Fair, Winchester, activity of 
tithings at, 98. 

Statute of Marlborough, grants ex- 
emption from suit of tourn, 122. 

Statute of Sheriffs (the second), pro- 
visions concerning hundred courts, 
121. 

Statute of View of Frankpledge, 123. 

Statute of Wales (Stotutum Walliae), 
on sheriff's tourn, 43. 

Statute of Westminster, effect upon 
capital pledges, 106. 

Statute of Winchester, complaint as 
to peace observance, 151. 

Stubbs, William, views on frank- 
pledge, 8, 9, 15 ft. 3, 31 «. 4, 37 n. 4, 
52, 166. 

Tenmantale, confused with frank- 
pledge, 38, 51-53. 

Tetbury, vill of, tithing receives a 
man taken on appeal of approver, 
93; a victim of Engelard de Cigony, 
96. 

Tewkesbury, view of frankpledge at, 
148 n. 8. 

Tithing, the Anglo-Saxon, 10-15; 
probable origin of, 12 «. 1; identity 
with township, 13; comparison with 
frankpledge tithing, 14-15; fusion 
with borh group, 27-29, 33. 
— the frankpledge, as a territorial 
division, 36-38, 88-90; as a group 
of ten, 38-39; non-existence of, in 
certain districts, 51, 52; various 
designations for, 86; number in- 
cluded in, 86-88; modes of designat- 
ing, 89; duties of, 90-103; attend- 
ance at view of frankpledge, 123; 
enrolment in, 129-130; at manorial 
leet, 147; enect of increased respon- 
sibilities of, 153; decline of, 155— 
156; maintenance after fifteenth 
century, 157-159; lists of members, 
170-172. 

Tithingman, the Anglo-Saxon, 10-12, 
and 12 n. 1; as township reeve, 13. 



194 



INDEX 



Tithingman, the frankpledge. See 
Capital pledge. 

Tithingpenny, 101-102. 

Tourn, the sheriff's, absent in certain 
counties, 48, 49, 52, 55; probably 
seigniorial in north, 52 n. 6; at- 
tendance of children at, 71; origin 
of, 112-116, 118; growth of, 116- 
117; irregular holding of, 118-121; 
suitors of, 122-124; procedure of, 
124-126; business of, 126-130; 
failure of, 154; decline of, 155-156. 

Trailbaston, commissions of, 154. 

Trent river, confluence with Humber 
the northern frankpledge limit, 51, 
and n. 3. 

Tyhtbysig men, 20-22, 24, 36. 

View of frankpledge, absent in certain 
districts, 48-49, 52; prevalent in 
thirty counties, 59, 64-67; exemp- 
tion from, 61; royal writ for hold- 
ing, 169. See also Leet and Tourn. 

Vill, the men of, to be in tithing, 44, 
68; responsible for capturing crim- 
inals, 67, 97; amerced for receiving 
men out of frankpledge, 91; rep- 
resentation at tourn, 123. 

Villains, thought by Healey to have 
been the only class in frankpledge, 
76 n. 1; predominance of, among 
frankpledge classes, 78, 85; effects 
of predominance, 164. 

Vinogradoff, Prof. Paul, refers to pre- 
Conquest suretyship as frankpledge, 
3 n.3; holds to theory of Anglo- 
Saxon origin of frankpledge, 7; 
on absence of maegth in Danelaw, 
25, and n. 2 ; on origin of frank- 
pledge, 30 n. 1 ; on nature of tentnan- 
tale, 52; on constitutional impor- 
tance of frankpledge, 166. 

Waitz, George, shows that frank- 
pledge was not a common Germanic 
institution, 5; views as to gegildan, 
9, 10; as to origin of frankpledge, 
30 n. 1. 



Wakefield, tourn at, not concerned 
with frankpledge business, 52 n. 6. 

Wales, non-existence of frankpledge 
in, 43, and n. 1; unusual privileges 
held by lords of Welsh border, 54. 

Wallingford, honor of, not to deny 
access to sheriff for holding view of 
frankpledge, 40. 

Ward, as substitute for frankpledge, 
85. 

Wednesbury, manor of, Staffordshire, 
election of tithingmen on, 103-104. 

Werborh, 21. 

Wergeld, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21 and 
n. 3, 32 n. 2, 92. 

Westington, hamlet of, Suffolk, elec- 
tion of capital pledge at, 110. 

Westmoreland, non-existence of frank- 
pledge in, 44; evidence of jurors 
in, 51-52, 55-56. 

William of Malmesbury, in error as to 
origin of frankpledge, 6, 34, and ». 8; 
as to its prevalence, 44, 60. 

William the Conqueror, regulation of, 
for protecting Normans, 30; prob- 
ably institutor of frankpledge, 30 
n. 1, 31; accepted old English laws, 
32; maintained public peace, 36, 
and n. 4; borh law attributed to, 36; 
probably held view of frankpledge, 
116. 

Worcester, no frankpledge at, 61; 
writ to bishop and sheriff of, 114 
n. 2. 

Writ, royal, for holding view of frank- 
pledge, 169. 

Wycombe, borough of, view of frank- 
pledge at, 148 n. 8. 

Wye, hundred of, thieves brought to, 
93. 

Yorkshire, probable absence of 
Saxon borh in, 32; southern bound- 
ary of, the northern frankpledge 
limit, 51; no frankpledge in, 52; 
explanation as to absence of frank- 
pledge, 57-59; independence of 
earls Siward and Tostig, 58. 



SEP 8 1910 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




01 1 798 543 A 



